


god loves everybody, don't remind me

by napricot



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Djalia | Ancestral Plane (Marvel), Erik Killmonger Lives, Family, Gen, Time Loop, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 70,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22389493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napricot/pseuds/napricot
Summary: N’Jadaka didn’t believe in the gods of his people. But belief was not a prerequisite of the gods’ attention, and the blood of the Panther tribe ran in N’Jadaka’s veins. Bast took hold of his soul in her mighty jaws and lifted it free of his body. She gave him a warning shake, just as she would a misbehaving kitten, and set him back. With one careful claw, she tweaked his path through time into a twisting loop. Wayward and abandoned though he was, N’Jadaka was still of her tribe. He could set things right, if given the chance.Erik gets a do-over. Erik getsa lotof do-overs. Or: Erik Killmonger's own personal version of Groundhog Day, only with a lot more murder, dying, trips to the ancestral plane, awkward family conversations, and divine intervention.
Relationships: Erik Killmonger & T'Challa
Comments: 261
Kudos: 786





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The National's "Graceless".
> 
> This fic is complete, I just need to light a fire under my ass to finish editing the last chapter and stop procrastinating about posting. All chapters should be posted within a week.
> 
> I started writing this like a week after seeing Black Panther. Clearly, it has taken _a while_ to finally finish and post. It's pretty different than the kind of thing I usually write, but I hope you give it a chance!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read this in its preliminary stages, its middle stages, and its mostly complete stage. Without those alpha readers and my sensitivity reader, I'd still be putting off finishing and posting this.
> 
> Content notes: this fic is rated M for graphic violence. Also, while I have not tagged Major Character Death, please be advised that this is a time loop fic, and people do die during some of the loops, it's just temporary for the most part. Erik also engages in some suicidal thinking/actions during some of the time loops.

Erik didn’t believe in the gods of his people. So he went on a bad trip thanks to some freaky purple flower, whatever. He’d been on a bad acid trip once too, that didn’t mean the San Francisco Bay was actually full of fucking giant friendly octopuses and evil squids. All that flower ritual shit was just a primitive holdover from ancient times, and Wakanda’s gods were no more real than the god his ma had prayed to.

That vision he had, seeing his dad—that wasn’t real. Wakanda’s panther god wasn’t real. He was dying, and no ancestral spirit plane would welcome him. He would simply end.

He thought he wouldn’t be afraid, but now, with his life ebbing away from him, the frantic animal fear of death scrabbled and whined inside of him, an instinct he couldn’t fight. Every beat of his heart boomed through his awareness. He understood abruptly, viscerally, that the heart was a muscle that could give out, understood that it would stop working sometime soon. Every beat took more effort than the one before it. He was going into shock, probably. Even the fear began to ebb on a tide that wouldn’t surge back.

The sun was setting and he should have been able to feel its last warmth on his face, but he couldn’t. T’Challa was holding him, his grip tight, but Erik could only register it distantly, like his body could only spare attention to the pain of the mortal wound in his gut. The strength the heart-shaped herb offered couldn’t conquer this. He didn’t want it to conquer this.

He would die free.

He hoped, vaguely, that T’Challa was the kind of stupidly honorable person who’d actually honor his last wish. And then it all went dark.

* * *

_YOU ARE NOT DONE YET, N’JADAKA._

* * *

_N’Jadaka didn’t believe in the gods of his people. But belief was not a prerequisite of the gods’ attention, and the blood of the Panther tribe ran in N’Jadaka’s veins. Bast took hold of his soul in her mighty jaws and lifted it free of his body. She gave him a warning shake, just as she would a misbehaving kitten, and set him back. With one careful claw, she tweaked his path through time into a twisting loop. Wayward and abandoned though he was, N’Jadaka was still of her tribe. He could set things right, if given the chance._

* * *

Erik woke up.

“I fucking _told_ you not to save m—”

“Told me not to what?” mumbled Linda. “Go back to sleep baby, the tracker on Klaue hasn’t gone off yet. Fuckin’ jet lag…”

What the fuck.

He didn’t go back to sleep. He patted at his chest, his stomach: no injuries, sure as hell no fatal gut wound, and only the scars Erik himself had put there. He looked across the bed at Linda, who had an early morning grumpy frown on her face. He’d shot her, hadn’t he? She’d been in the way, Klaue had thought she counted as leverage, as if Erik let anyone have leverage over him, and he’d been so close to getting to Wakanda, so he’d shot her, left her there, because it wouldn’t matter soon enough, soon he’d be king of Wakanda, soon he’d remake the world, and Linda had known what she was signing up for—

Linda was dead. Erik was supposed to be dead too. But he wasn’t dead, obviously, and neither was she, and he wasn’t king of Wakanda yet, so...it was just a really fucking detailed dream. Had to be. He’d take a shower and order some room service breakfast, and then they’d get to work, and it wouldn’t be anything like his fucked up dream at all.

Except everything was exactly like his fucking dream.

* * *

Erik had never experienced so much deja vu so often in his entire fucking life. Everything was familiar, everything went just like how Erik had dreamed it. Busting Klaue out of jail, getting to Wakanda...all of it might as well have been the cut scene in a video game he’d already played. When Klaue held a gun to Linda’s head, for just a second, Erik wanted to put it all on pause, take a few extra seconds to run the numbers. Could he shoot Klaue without shooting Linda, or without Klaue shooting her? Could he make that shot? Could Linda break out of Klaue’s hold just long enough to _let_ him make the shot? Probably not. The half-resigned, half-terrified look on Linda’s face said she didn’t think he could either. She was smart that way.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and Erik took his shot. He aimed for Klaue, but just as he pulled the trigger, they moved. The bullet hit Linda instead, just like he’d known it would. Just like it had before. He had that extra split-second to make the shot on Klaue though, and he took it.

“I’ll make this worth it, I promise. We’re gonna free our people,” he told Linda’s body, as if she were still in there. Then he grabbed Klaue’s body, and headed for the plane that would take him to Wakanda.

When he crossed the border to greet the wary border guards, he waited to feel something, some sense of homecoming or belonging as he stepped foot on his father’s unconquered homeland. _The most beautiful country on Earth_ , his dad always used to say. And it _was_ beautiful in the light of early morning, like the sun was shining on the plains for the very first time, gilding them with wonder and adoration.

That wasn’t relevant to the mission, though.

And anyway, the shackles on his wrists put a damper on his appreciation for the scenery. The restraints rankled, made rage start to simmer in him, because wasn’t he a prince of this nation? And he was being welcomed with chains? _Fuck that_. Erik had had enough of chains. He was ready for a crown.

Chains or no, he couldn’t help but notice that the hidden capital city was as beautiful as the landscape surrounding it, and just like he’d imagined it: a city tucked snugly beside water, like Oakland, with elevated trains, like Oakland, but that was where the resemblance ended. Vibrant green growth twined with futuresque buildings that looked like something out of Star Wars, all mingled with ancient-looking structures everywhere, a timeless kind of harmony. The trains hovered and hummed instead of clacking and clattering.

It was just like his dad’s stories, all the wistful, fierce love of his home made real. Erik reached for even an echo of that love, or a dim reflection of it. _This is it, Stevens. This is the homeland. This is where you belong._ And yet, no sense of homecoming rose up in him. The joy and comfort and safety he distantly remembered failed to reappear. The capital city might as well have been a pretty fantasy, still just the stuff of bedtime stories.

“The Golden City,” said W’Kabi, something smug and triumphant in the smirk on his face, his eyes cold and assessing.

Erik wanted to punch that look off his face, and maybe would have if not for the shackles on his wrists. What the hell had W’Kabi done to earn this shining city, huh? Ride around the gorgeous plains of Wakanda on giant rhinos, just in case some dumbfuck stumbled across the border, while Erik and his brothers and sisters around the world suffered and died? Did any of the people walking these streets have to worry about being hassled by cops, or worse? Did any of the smiling and laughing people on those maglev trains ever think about the rest of Africa, their struggling and starving brothers and sisters? Did they think of the men and women who shared their skin, being executed on the streets for the crime of being Black?

Erik doubted it. That was okay. He’d change all of that. He’d start with W’Kabi.

W’Kabi’s buttons were obvious, and didn’t even require much pushing. This was a man hungry for war. Erik knew the type, because they were the same all over. They got to Iraq or Afghanistan, or whatever other hellhole was on the brink of exploding into violence, and the thin veneer of discipline and civility cracked. Something hungry for blood and glory climbed through the broken places. W’Kabi was just the fucking same: not made for peacetime. Erik could relate.

All it took was a couple goads about Klaue and T’Challa’s failure to catch him, and some suggestive comments about what an unleashed Wakanda could achieve, and Erik had something like an ally. Wakanda, for all its advancement, wasn’t so different from any of the other countries Erik’s unit had wreaked havoc in. He told himself that was why all of this kept feeling more and more familiar. 

When he got to the throne room, that too was familiar, and again, Erik felt the disorienting lurch of deja vu. How the fuck had he known what the throne would look like? What the queen mother would be wearing? He’d meant to swagger into this place like he owned it, because he was _gonna_ own it, but now he stumbled as W’Kabi led him up to the throne’s dais.

He locked eyes with T’Challa. It should’ve been a stare down, Erik _meant_ for it to be a stare down, but instead T’Challa was frowning at him in confusion, head cocked, like he could tell something was wrong here. The day’s fucked up deja vu swept over Erik again in one skin-crawling wave. He bit the inside of his lip, hard, and focused on the here and now.

 _You’re just remembering your dream wrong, applying what you’re seeing now to what you saw in your sleep, or maybe in Dad’s journals_ , he told himself, even as he parroted his dream-self’s words, and heard the council’s familiar responses echoed back to him.

After T’Challa accepted his challenge, W’Kabi took him to an actual room in the palace, not the cell he’d half-expected. Erik knew what he should have been doing right about now: he should have been driving a wedge in the small crack that T’Challa’s failure to catch Klaue had formed. He should have been reminding W’Kabi of just who had actually won him justice. He felt too fucking jittery though, equally thrown off by every moment of familiarity and of strangeness.

He just wanted this shit to make sense again. So he ran his damn mouth. It wasn’t a good habit, Erik knew it wasn’t. Every bit of his training told him it wasn’t. There’d been so many goddamned years when he couldn’t, not without risking every single thing he’d worked so hard for. But here, in Wakanda? Well, he was already unwelcome, and he was about to do way worse. Might as well let his mouth run some more.

“I figured a bastard cousin like me would get tossed in the dungeons.”

“We don’t have dungeons.”

“For real? Nah, course you don’t. No prison-industrial complex here in Wakanda, no sir.”

W’Kabi gave him a sideways look and a shitty little smirk. “Accustomed to prisons, are you?”

“Oh, fuck you. That what you think all Black men in America are like?” he asked, and W’Kabi shrugged.

“I would not know.”

Erik switched from English to Xhosa. “We’re not all slaves, no thanks to Wakanda,” he said, but W’Kabi’s haughty sneer stayed in place. Erik was starting to regret needing this asshole for his plans.

They stopped in front of a door flanked by stern-faced Dora Milaje at parade rest, their spears planted in front of them. The door opened with a wave of W’Kabi’s wrist to reveal a perfectly nice room, but Erik wasn’t fooled. It was a cell, sure enough, or at least it would be as long as the Dora Milaje were on guard at the door.

“You may stay here until the challenge,” W’Kabi told him, in English. What a dick. Erik’s Xhosa was pretty good, but apparently it didn’t meet Wakandan standards. “Food will be brought to you.”

“What, no tour?”

“Win the challenge. Then you will get a tour,” said W’Kabi, and after a long, exaggerated pause, he added, “my prince,” and showed him into the room with deliberate courtesy.

The door closed behind W’Kabi silently, and then Erik was alone. He killed some time doing a circuit of the small room and its attached bathroom, both of which had the impersonal feel of a usually vacant hotel room. Apart from the obviously Wakandan design, it wasn’t all that different from the room he’d had in Busan, and the thought was weirdly disquieting. The view from the window was at least entirely different, and after he’d searched the room for any unpleasant surprises, he killed some time staring out at the bustling and colorful Golden City.

When he succeeded, this would be his home.

Sure didn’t feel like home though. It felt the same as when he’d looked out other windows, onto other cities: Baghdad and Kabul and Mogadishu. Just another mission. The last one, hopefully.

He should have spent the night resting up for the next day’s fight, but he couldn’t sleep. He was too worried about having some new fucked up, overly realistic dream. He paced the small room instead, then stretched and exercised, going over his plan the whole time. Everything hinged on getting the orders and cargo out to the War Dogs. That had to be the first real thing Erik did as king. His dad’s version of this plan had been too slow, too cautious, but then his dad hadn’t had all the War Dogs at his command. His dad hadn’t had _Wakanda_ at his command.

Erik would, and he was done with caution, with words and appeals to dignity and high-minded justice. Violence and power were the only things the rest of the world understood. That was what Wakanda had to show the world, what Erik would _make_ Wakanda show the world.

When it came time for the challenge, he changed some stuff up, just to shake off that goddamn deja vu: he killed Uncle James quicker, didn’t wait to hear any bullshit about how Erik ought to leave T’Challa out of this, then he won the challenge against T’Challa within minutes, easily anticipating what moves were coming. No way could T’Challa survive that gut wound and that drop, that was the fucked up dream talking.

Eerie deja vu or no, it didn’t matter: he was finally king.

He entered the quiet chamber full of the glowing heart-shaped herb, and it was just like he somehow already remembered it, the same terrible familiarity he’d felt in the throne room. How could he know what it would be like? Had his dad told him? He must have, that must have been it, how the hell else would he know about it. He drank the weird herb juice, the strange and bitter taste familiar. The pain of it was familiar too, like the aches from the worst fever he’d ever had, but worse even than that. When the dirt closed over his head, hot and dry, it was almost a relief, and then he ended up right back in that old Oakland apartment to face his dad’s wide, tear-filled eyes.

 _This isn’t real_ , he told himself. _It’s just a fucked up, bad trip._

“My son, what have you done? Why are you here again?”

“Again? This isn’t real,” he said, and heard the note of hysteria in his voice. He locked that shit down. “None of this is real,” he insisted, angry now. This herb was fucking with his head, and he did not sign up for that.

Something growled, low and ominous and as loud as thunder.

“Erik—”

He woke up again. The superpowers were nice, but he was done with this bad trip bullshit. _Breathe_ , all the priests and priestesses told him, like that was the problem. He shoved them all back.

“Burn it all!” he ordered (again?), and he got to work. He had a war to win, and an empire to build.

Except apparently, he still had to get rid of his goddamned cousin. How the _fuck_ was he still alive?

The battle outside the mines wasn’t like any other op Erik had run. The Wakandans didn’t use guns, for one thing, and Erik was really missing his right about now. He didn’t give a damn if it wasn’t honorable. He’d won the challenge: this was just a war, and wars were brutal. He didn’t see any reason to pretend otherwise. Let W’Kabi and his men understand just what it was they were so hungry for. Let them get a preview of the months and years to come. All that mattered was that the planes and their cargo went out.

Erik fought, and it came so easy with the power of the heart-shaped herb coursing through him. No fucking wonder Wakandans believed in gods when the herb and the panther suit could make a king feel like this. He fought the Dora Milaje to a standstill, and he fought the princess off until her brother showed back up, and he fought and he fought and he fought, like he could do it forever here in the bowels of Mount Bashenga.

Erik could have sworn he heard an otherworldly growl, but that was probably just some machinery in the mine. T’Challa sure as hell didn’t seem to hear it, because he wasn’t distracted in that split second like Erik was, and that split second was all T’Challa needed to slam his dagger home in one vicious, gutting tear, as neat and brutal as an actual panther’s claws.

 _Well, shit_. He’d been so fucking close too.

Just like the dream, T’Challa was kind in victory. The terrified part of Erik, the part that was desperate not to die, desperate for just one more moment, clung to that kindness. Mostly though, it just gave him one last burst of angry energy.

“Oh, now you’re gonna be all nice, cuz? Didn’t see you rolling the welcome mat out when I walked into the throne room.”

Through a field of vision that was growing ever darker, Erik saw T’Challa bow his head.

“And I was wrong. I am sorry. My father, Zuri, they were wrong for what they did to you. If I had known—”

Erik didn’t find out what T’Challa would have done if he had known. Not even the heart-shaped herb could keep Erik’s struggling heart working when he was bleeding out. The Wakandan sunset went dark.

And then Erik woke up again.

* * *

He was back in the hotel room in Busan, uninjured, Linda alive and asleep. _What the fuck_. He checked the date on his phone: four days ago, again. No way was all that just a dream. Or some sort of dream within a dream? A delusion? Did he get dosed with acid and not notice? _No fucking way_.

But the alternative was…Erik didn’t even know how to classify what the alternative was. It wasn’t _possible_.

Whatever, he’d stick with the plan. He had a plan. Even now, some kid in some backwards town in the South was probably about to be killed by the cops; even now, thousands of men and women sat in American prisons, land of the supposedly free, enslaved in all but name for the crime of selling drugs white people bought from them with no consequence. Even now, every minute, every second, people, _his_ people, were dying in misery Wakanda could lift off of them with so little effort it was laughable. Erik was done wasting time, waiting for that long arc of history that everyone told him bent toward justice.

Hundreds of years of slavery, decades of second class citizenship, and the broken parts of what the white man raped and pillaged scattered across the globe, and he was supposed to _wait_? No.

Wakanda had what it took to bend that arc towards justice all on its own, but they’d been sitting pretty for centuries, ignoring the misery and evil outside their borders. Erik had every right and responsibility to take hold of the power they’d failed to use, to grab hold of that arc and _make_ it bend towards justice.

That was the plan. Everything else was a distraction.

* * *

He made sure to kill T’Challa during the challenge, and didn’t leave it to the fall and the river below: he went for the heart, and watched T’Challa take his last breath, as the queen mother and princess screamed and cried. But the challenge was won, fair and square, so the priestess passed the mantle on, and Erik became king.

* * *

His dad was pacing in the apartment this time.

“N’Jadaka, what are you doing?” he asked, in his sternest dad voice. Part of Erik, a very small part, wanted to automatically apologize. The hell if he’d apologize to a ghost his own tripping brain was conjuring up though.

“Taking back my rightful place. Winning freedom for our people! Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“Not like this!”

* * *

Erik figured it’d be more or less easy sailing from there, but there was still a damn battle when he was sending the cargo planes out. The Dora Milaje broke ranks when some vaguely familiar looking chick came after him, fury and grief burning in her eyes.

“I am Nakia of the River Tribe, and I challenge you, Killmonger,” she said. Now where the hell had she learned that nickname of his?

“We’re done with that challenge shit.”

“You do not get to overthrow thousands of years of tradition at your whim, usurper. Or are you already afraid that you will lose the mantles of king and Black Panther the same way you gained them?”

“Nah, I’m not afraid. But it’s some backwards bullshit, isn’t it, deciding who rules based on single combat?” Maybe it’d take some more object examples for the lesson to set in. People would see soon enough that challenging wasn’t worth it. “C’mon then, one more challenge,” he said, and beckoned her to start. She came at him with no hesitation, and the battle erupted, both between them and around them.

He thought he’d have the advantage easy enough, what with the heart-shaped herb, but she must have gotten a hold of some, because she matched him strength for strength, and she was faster too, sneaky and vicious, deflecting blows and shifting his momentum in unexpected ways so he was constantly off balance. It ended in the dark mine shaft again, when he failed to keep track of what the hell she was doing with both those circular blades of hers. She did it quick and neat, at least, two fast strokes, one to his carotid and one to his femoral, the blades so sharp that the pain was almost sweet. He felt cold already; shock was setting in fast. His hands gripped uselessly at his wounds, too weak to stop his life blood pulsing out of him.

“Empires fall, Killmonger. What I hope Wakanda can build is better than an empire,” she said, and then the blood loss took him.

* * *

Or maybe it didn’t, because Erik just woke up again, right back in that Busan hotel room.

In Iraq, it used to be a grim joke, calling day-to-day operations and missions Groundhog Day. Even Erik’s team, ostensibly handling high-risk, high-difficulty missions, fell into the habit, because there was no better way to describe the monotony of a mission that repeated again and again, across different cities and countries and terrorist cells. The details changed, but the mission stayed the same, and none of it seemed like it was making any difference worth a damn, judging by how many fucking times they ran the same kind of mission in different locales.

This, though, was something different. This wasn’t just a joke. This, maybe, was an actual goddamn time loop. Which, _what the fuck_. Erik wasn’t goddamn Bill Murray. He wasn’t some schlubby reporter trying to fix his sadsack life. He was a fucking Navy SEAL and prince of Wakanda.

He could figure this time loop shit out, if that was what was going on. He could beat this, he could become king of Wakanda and stay king, then rule over a new world built in Wakanda’s image.

That was probably the whole point of the thing, right? Some glitch in the universe giving him a chance to get things right. Or maybe this was what hell was: failing and dying again and again, over and over. Given his current circumstances, that was an uncomfortably plausible scenario. _There’s no such thing as hell_ , he told himself. There had to be a rational explanation for this, he just had to find it.

He started by testing the limits of the loop: he ditched Linda, holed up in another Busan hotel room, and just waited it out, doing nothing apart from watching the news and living off the rations in his pack, interacting with only the bare minimum of people. This would be his scientific control: eliminate as many variables as possible and observe what was left.

It took four days, the same amount of time of the first loop, then it reset at some point after midnight. Though he should have been able to stay awake—24 hours without sleep was nothing compared to a Navy SEAL’s SERE training—he couldn’t seem to hold onto consciousness on that last night. One second he was awake and waiting, and the next he was waking up back in bed with Linda. Erik let a couple loops pass that way, testing the limits of that fourth night and taking the opportunity to gather more intel on Klaue and Wakanda. Maybe he was getting a chance to do this right, to get the throne and keep it. He’d succeed the next time, he was sure.

* * *

He didn’t. This time, the goddamn princess blew him the fuck up. So okay, next time, he’d kill her too, he thought, as the flames overtook him.

Small mercies, it turned out you didn’t really feel anything when you died in an explosion. Erik had a nanosecond to feel grateful for that before he stopped feeling anything at all.

* * *

He went for the princess after winning the challenge against T’Challa, then took out Nakia too, and figured he was free and clear. Except then General Okoye got him with a spear to the throat during the fight by the mine that was starting to seem inevitable. She’d gone through W’Kabi to do it too, which Erik honestly kind of respected. So okay, lesson learned, Erik would deal with her next time.

* * *

No joy. The rest of the Dora Milaje just fucking swarmed him.

* * *

Alright, a purge of the guard and the royal family, that was more than Erik would have preferred, but it wasn’t exactly unheard of when it came to overthrowing a government. Too bad that pushed W’Kabi past his breaking point. Getting trampled and gored by a rhino was absolutely Erik’s least fucking favorite way to die so far.

* * *

He really thought he had it the next time: no T’Challa, the princess and queen mother dead too, Nakia killed in another challenge, the Dora Milaje and General Okoye killed with a pretty goddamn hard to arrange ambush and explosion, and then W’Kabi imprisoned, his life collateral for the rest of the Border Tribe’s loyalty. All that had to fucking do it, right? And it almost did.

Except then some giant motherfucker with a wood stick showed up, him and his entourage all making weird barking noises.

“I, M’Baku of the Jabari, challenge you, foreign usurper!”

And then M’Baku straight up fucking tossed Erik down the mine shaft. He had way too much time to wonder if it was true that you passed out before impact on a long drop like this.

Then he learned that it wasn’t.

At the bottom, in the suffocating dark, the very small part of him that wasn’t made up of a pain so huge he didn’t know how the world even had room for it, much less his body, kept replaying the terrible sound of his bones breaking on impact.

When he woke up again, whole and unhurt, the sound followed him. He stayed in bed, not moving, for a long time.

“Erik, you up?” asked Linda. He didn’t open his eyes. He felt Linda’s fingers brush at the wetness on his face. He didn’t know when that had happened. “Baby, why are you crying?”

* * *

He got sloppy after that, fucked up his shot to take T’Challa out, and ended up back in the mine, the fucking mine, with a dagger to the chest. It was mutually assured destruction this time, at least; he’d gotten in enough claw swipes at T’Challa to ensure he’d be dying in this mine right alongside Erik.

“I’m sorry,” gasped T’Challa.

Erik turned his head to look at T’Challa where he was collapsed on the other side of the mine’s mag lev tracks. “What? What for?”

“For how we failed you, how—no one brought you home.”

Erik had spent years with what-ifs and might-have-beens, had played out dozens of happily-ever-after scenarios before he’d learned there was no such thing. It was strange to hear someone else raise one of those might-have-beens now, stranger still to have someone to share a what-if with.

“What would you have done, if your pops had brought me to Wakanda?”

T’Challa reached his hand out across the humming tracks, as if to take Erik’s hand.

“I would have welcomed you with joy, cousin,” said T’Challa, voice thick with tears and probably blood.

T’Challa’s hand was still reaching out to him, and Erik almost wanted to reach back. It was years too late for this might-have-been, and their fathers had decided it for them anyway, but here T’Challa was, reaching out anyway. Even after all the fighting, even after a goddamned attempted coup and inciting a civil war. That, more than anything, convinced Erik he wasn’t just feeding a dying man a kind lie.

“Yeah? Even if I was the weird, angry American kid who didn’t know shit about Wakanda?”

“Even then. I would have loved to show you Wakanda. It is so much more than a fairy tale, Erik. We could—”

Erik didn’t hear what T’Challa thought they could have done. The mine’s train came, and everything went dark. Erik woke in Busan knowing that it didn’t matter anyway; Erik had no intention of indulging T’Challa’s soft, coddled heart, not in this loop, or in any other. All that mattered was liberating his people, by any means necessary.

* * *

The failures and deaths went on for more and more loops, until they all started to blend together. He’d change some part of his plan, take out different players, consolidate power in different places, but it always ended the same: someone challenged him or killed him right after he sent the cargo planes out. If he took out any of the women, that left him with M’Baku, and if he tried to take M’Baku out before it even came to a battle, the side trip to the mountains left him too vulnerable to attack on the way back to the palace. He gave up on it after the third time he got thrown off the damn mountain by a horde of Jabari tribespeople. Fuck it. He didn’t like the cold anyway.

When some random middle-aged white guy in a suit took him out with what was probably a goddamn head shot judging by the brief explosion of pain in his head followed by darkness, he figured it was time to regroup. He needed a new plan. Maybe it was time to try something totally different. Maybe he should devote some more attention to how the hell he was stuck in a time loop at all.

* * *

The next loop, he let T’Challa take custody of Klaue, left Limbani with the CIA, and grabbed the other middle-aged white guy instead. Erik was still kind of pissed about the head shot, so he wasn’t gentle about the grabbing, or about the search and pat down. Gun, wallet, pen, knife, a couple crumpled up receipts, a handkerchief...no weird, suspicious devices or glowing artifacts. Figured it wouldn’t be as easy as that.

“Now what does the CIA want with vibranium, Agent Everett Ross?” he asked when the guy came to again.

Ross shook off his confusion with admirable speed, and just raised an eyebrow, seemingly unbothered by the restraints he was bound with, or the bruises blooming on his face, or the rocking of the van as Linda drove them in circles around Busan.

“Sorry the deal fell through and everything, but if you didn’t need to know that before you sold it to me, you don’t need to know it now.”

“A’ight. But that wasn’t the only misidentified artifact kicking around museum exhibits full of stolen goods. I can get you more, but the price just went up on account of all this inconvenience. New price includes an explanation.”

Ross studied him, pale eyes sharp in his unremarkable, mild-mannered face. The CIA loved guys like this, the bland white guys who looked like any boring middle management suit, easy to underestimate and ignore. Erik knew better.

“There’s not really much of an explanation,” said Ross with a studied shrug. “Vibranium is the rarest metal on earth, and Wakanda says it hasn’t got much of it left. The US government is interested in pursuing alternative sources.”

“And that’s got nothing to do with any recent alien invasions?”

Ross’s forehead wrinkled up in confusion before he could retreat to bland impassivity. “Alien invasions? Like, what, the thing in New York?”

“Yeah.”

Ross opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “Yeah, I’m not following.”

“Alien tech. You want vibranium for weapons to use against alien tech.” It was a shot in the dark, the kind of wild ass guesswork Erik would have reamed anyone in his unit out for. But he was in a pretty unprecedented situation right now, and shots in the dark were all he had. “Or are you already using the alien tech?”

“No? I really have no idea what you’re talking about. The CIA just wants a source for vibranium, that’s all. Klaue’s the best option right now, so I’m here to make a deal.”

Ross’s confusion seemed genuine. If there was any alien shit involved in this somewhere, it was going on over Ross’s head, and it almost certainly wasn’t any part of his current op. So this was just the usual CIA bullshit. Fuck. There went Erik’s one halfway plausible explanation for being stuck in a time loop.

“Can’t find any reason to invade Wakanda, huh? Just fake up some intel about weapons of mass destruction, it worked before.”

Ross smiled thinly. “That’s above my pay grade.”

“And if I told you Wakanda’s sitting on an entire mountain of vibranium?”

“I’d want confirmation.”

“Say I got you that confirmation.”

“Then I’d take it to my superiors, and I imagine the United States would hope for a more open economic and diplomatic relationship with the recently crowned king of Wakanda.”

Yeah, right. There’d be a few years of diplomacy, maybe, but eventually they’d send in someone like Erik, and Wakanda would become one more country pillaged by the white man. Only thing that’d keep that from happening was a preemptive strike.

“I’ll think about it,” he told Ross, then opened the van’s rear door, and threw him from the still-moving van.

* * *

When the loop reset again, he went back to the original plan of busting Klaue out, with a few changes: he made Limbani and Linda switch so Linda was driving, and when it came time to drag Klaue out of the CIA black site, he accidentally-on purpose pushed Limbani in the way of a bullet. Might as well get rid of Klaue’s henchman sooner rather than later. 

“Keep driving around in circles,” he told Linda when he shoved Klaue in the van. “I got some questions Klaue’s gotta answer.”

Klaue pouted. “Not fair! Another interrogation after you just _rescued_ me from an interrogation? That’s not what teammates do.”

“We aren’t teammates. You wanna stay alive? You want your money? Then you’re gonna answer my questions.”

Erik was pretty sure Klaue wasn’t right in the head, and fuck, that _laugh_. It was annoying as hell, and more than enough to justify murder. But crazy or not, money was money, and Klaue wanted his. He’d give up some answers if his cash payout was on the line.

“Who was your buyer for all that vibranium you stole back in the day?”

“You’ll have to specify, I have stolen _a lot_ of vibranium.”

Erik poked at Klaue’s neck with a gun, and shoved the gun’s barrel into the rough scarring there. “The vibranium you stole that earned you this brand.”

Klaue made an exaggerated, bug-eyed face of offense. “You wanna undercut me, steal my buyers out from under me? No way!”

Erik opened the case with the diamonds, grabbed a handful, then opened the van’s rear door and threw them out onto the road.

“Hey! That’s coming out of your cut!”

“Answer the question, or the streets of Busan are gonna keep getting paved with diamonds.”

Klaue moaned in dismay. “The streets don’t need bling, I do!” he whined. God, it was going to be so satisfying shooting this nutjob in the fucking head. Erik grabbed another handful of diamonds. “Okay okay okay! Fine! My buyer was the prince of Wakanda! So I was just keeping it in the family, huh? Nothing wrong with that.”

The prince of Wakanda? He couldn’t mean T’Challa, who’d been around Erik’s age back then. That left N’Jobu. So that was where Pops had gotten the goods for his plan. Erik had always wondered, but he’d figured some other Wakandan War Dogs had smuggled some vibranium out. There hadn’t been any vibranium or weapons in the apartment when Erik had found his dad, so T’Chaka and Uncle Zuri must have taken it back with them after murdering N’Jobu.

“Why would you steal it from Wakanda then sell it right back to them?” Surely Klaue could’ve gotten more money by selling elsewhere.

Klaue snorted. “I was selling it to the prince, not to Wakanda. Seems baby brother had his own plans that his big brother the king didn’t know about.” Klaue shrugged, a lopsided gesture that nearly tipped him over. “No business of mine, those African countries are all the same, always fighting and overthrowing rulers. Savages, all of them.”

“Yeah, and white folks like you got nothing to do with overthrowing any rulers, huh? Is the prince the one who paid you $10 million to kill T’Chaka?”

Erik knew N’Jobu hadn’t. At the time, his dad had been a War Dog without access to that kind of cash. According to SHIELD’s leaked files on Klaue, someone else had ordered that hit, and Klaue had failed miserably at it, then cut and run with the money. Klaue scowled now at the reminder.

“None of your business! And I made good, didn’t I? They wanted Wakandan resources, I got them Wakandan resources!”

“Anything else you steal for people? Alien tech, maybe?”

Klaue narrowed his eyes. “I’ve had enough of the Avengers, thanks! No spacemen tech for me, no way.” Klaue started shaking his head furiously back and forth. “Too risky, too too risky. Learned my lesson when I lost my fucking arm!”

Erik snorted. Yeah, okay, fair enough.

“And you thought this was gonna be less risky?” Erik shook his head. “Bad call.”

So much for the possibility of Klaue being the source of this time loop. But if there was no alien tech via Ross or Klaue, that left Wakanda as the only option.

He shot Klaue in the head, one clean bullet through his forehead. Erik now knew from experience that it didn’t hurt, which seemed too easy a death for Klaue, but anything else would have left too much of a mess. He still had to present Klaue’s body to the border guard, after all.

The van swerved and lurched, then rocked to a stop.

“What the fuck is happening back there?” screamed Linda. Shit. He’d forgotten about her. “Erik!”

“Everything’s fine! Just get to the airfield, and—”

Linda came to the back of the van, her gun already up as she scanned for threats. “You _shot_ him?!”

“Yeah, he was starting some shit, so—” Linda’s gun settled on him. “Hey! What are you doing?”

“You got Limbani shot too. I saw you push him, Erik,” said Linda, her voice shaking. Her hands were steady though, the gun aimed solidly at his head. Goddamnit. Taking off the mask earlier had clearly been a mistake. “I know what’s happening here. You want all the money, you wanna tie up all the loose ends, and I’m gonna be next—”

“Babe, no—”

“Or this is a double cross—”

Linda’s eyes were wild and furious. Shit. That wasn’t exactly a crazy assumption, and he _had_ been about to ditch her at the airfield, or even kill her if he had to. Now wasn’t exactly the time to let any of that slip, obviously. Linda had a clear shot at his head, and from this close, she wasn’t likely to miss.

“No, no it isn’t, I swear, he was the one who was gonna double cross us, I had to—” he tried.

Linda’s face twisted with fear and fury; she wasn’t buying it. Time to cut his losses. He started to bring his own gun up, but he wasn’t fast enough. Linda shot first.

He heard more than felt the impact of the bullet on his skull in one explosion of sound and sensation too shocking to be pain, and then it was over.

* * *

Erik came awake with a convulsive shudder that nearly sent him off the bed. His hand went up automatically to his forehead, but of course, there was no bullet hole there, not anymore.

Well alright. So he’d finally managed to find a way to get even Linda to kill him. Maybe next up, Limbani would just run him the fuck over in the van and then Erik would have been killed by every single damn person involved in this whole fucked up scenario. Achievement almost unlocked. Maybe he’d manage it now, on loop number—shit, how many loops had it been? Over thirty? Yeah, definitely over thirty. He counted in his head, went over each loop—there’d been more than forty, no, fifty—how the fuck had he _lost count_ , there couldn’t have been enough loops to _lose count_ —

Whatever the count was, it had been weeks. Not just weeks, _months_.

Long-delayed panic slammed into him. The plan wasn’t working, no version of the plan was fucking working, he wasn’t any closer to becoming king of Wakanda and surviving it, and what if he finally did succeed? What if he took the throne and secured power and got the cargo planes out and founded an empire, and still, he ended up right back here? After all, it wasn’t like Erik had any fucking clue why he was stuck reliving the same four days over and over again anyway. Everything he knew about physics said this shouldn’t be possible.

 _That’s what you have to figure out, Stevens_. _How the fuck this is possible._ He breathed, in and out, slow, until the panic started to pass. He had a plan. He’d ruled out Ross and Klaue, so now he just had to try the next possibilities. That was the new plan. 

Maybe it was some Wakandan technology, some bizarre last resort safety measure, like Wakanda knew how to hit the reset button if shit really hit the fan for them. He spent a few loops running down that possibility, playing nice with T’Challa and the elders, asking them questions, digging around on the Wakandan internet. When the subtle approach didn’t work, he just straight up asked.

“Y’all have any weird alien shit happen here?” he asked while he was getting an awkward tour around the Citadel from T’Challa and Okoye.

He’d played nice this time, in the interest of using his three days in Wakanda to get some answers, so he’d dumped Klaue’s body on Wakanda’s doorstep with some bullshit story about Klaue having killed N’Jobu too. He didn’t really think anyone was buying it, but no one had kicked him out yet.

“Excuse me?” said T’Challa.

“Aliens. Don’t know if you noticed that time they invaded New York. Was Wakanda gonna do anything about that, by the way? Or were you just waiting to see how that was gonna shake out?”

“We were preparing a response, but the Avengers were victorious before it became necessary,” said Okoye, giving him some real obvious side eye.

“Yeah, okay, sure. So, aliens? Weird alien tech lying around, anything like that goin’ on here?”

T’Challa and Okoye exchanged concerned, baffled glances. T’Challa’s face was too damn honest for any lies, that much Erik had learned by now. If he did know something, he’d have gone blank, not baffled. Okoye was just pretty obviously coming to some unfavorable conclusions about his sanity level.

“No,” said T’Challa carefully. “Is there a reason you’re asking, cousin?”

Erik sighed. “Not really.”

When he was left alone in a set of pretty nice rooms, he looked up time travel and time loops and aliens on the Wakandan version of the internet. He didn’t find anything. Well, nothing apart from Groundhog Day references and the same kind of thing he’d have found on the rest of the internet. Isolationist or not, Wakanda still got American movies. He wouldn’t give up yet though.

He spent the next loop with Princess Shuri, barricading them both in her lab to interrogate her.

“Is this a kidnapping attempt?” she asked, sounding more excited than scared, her eyes sparkling with way too much interest. She had some sense though: her interest gave way to wary fear when she saw his weapons.

“Nah, princess. I’ve just got some questions I wanna ask.”

“You don’t need to lock us in my lab for that.”

“Don’t wanna be interrupted. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”

Not this loop, anyway. She was just a kid, really. Not the first one he’d killed, probably not the last, but still. Erik didn’t take any pleasure in killing kids.

“I am pretty sure that every bad guy who has ever said that has, in fact, been lying,” she muttered. He ignored it.

“So Wakanda’s a few centuries ahead of the rest of the world: you guys got time travel yet?”

Her eyebrows flew up. “Uh, no. Time travel is not possible. Not without breaking the speed of light anyway, and that is not possible either. I am a genius, and vibranium can do a lot, but…not that. I mean, maybe if we found a way to create stable wormholes big enough to—”

“What about time loops? That’s not time travel, that’s just time manipulation. Like, I dunno, a mobius strip in four dimensions.”

“That’s an interesting idea. Yes, a time loop would be a little like a mobius strip, wouldn’t it? And anyone can make one of those. But manipulating time itself…” she shook her head. “I won’t say it’s not possible, but Wakanda certainly hasn’t managed it. Manipulating the _perception_ of time, sure, and extending lifespans, but time itself? I am not certain it is possible, given human biological limits. Maybe you could loop time, but what’s the point if you don’t remember because you’ve looped your own body too? All your cells would revert to the earlier point in time, including your brain cells. The effect would be like putting yourself in a kind of stasis.”

That was a good point. Erik’s body reset with every loop, injuries disappearing, but his memories stayed intact. That shouldn’t have been possible, not if time was truly looping. Memory formation was a physical process that should have been undone along with everything else. Groundhog Day had never mentioned that fucking plot hole, now had it.

“Isolate the subject somehow, take ‘em out of the closed system at reset then dump them back in it,” he suggested.

“Maybe. But there isn’t any system outside of time. Not any that humans can understand or access, anyway.” Shuri looked at him closely. “If you want me to build you a time machine, I am sorry to disappoint you. I am very, very smart, but not totally-transcend-the-laws-of-physics smart.”

“Yeah, same,” said Erik absently, pacing as he thought. Maybe no earthbound technology could explain the loop Erik found himself in, but there’d been an alien invasion not that long ago. Had he unwittingly run into some alien tech at some point…?

They were both silent for a long moment. The “stuck in hell” theory was starting to feel way too likely.

“Being kidnapped for thought experiments is interesting, I will admit. Is there anything else, or can I have you arrested now?”

Shuri’s voice was still casual, but her hands were restless. Erik wondered if he should get his takeover plan back on track. He’d have to kill Shuri if so. She was too much of a threat to his rule. Maybe if he just trapped her here for long enough…before he could formulate a plan, Shuri blasted him with some small thing on her wrist, and then T’Challa was on him, leaping in from out of fucking nowhere. Could that panther suit go _invisible_?

As he grappled with T’Challa on the ground, he heard Shuri clap. “Oh! Multiverse theory! A time loop could, theoretically, not be a loop in spacetime at all, but instead be a matter of traveling from one universe to another—”

Turned out T’Challa was pretty fucking protective of his baby sister. Erik, more interested in what Shuri was saying instead of the fight, didn’t block the claws striking at his carotid in time. Death by rapid blood loss wasn’t bad as ways to die went, at least. Messy, sure, but it was fast. A few frantic pumps of his heart, and everything went dark and cold.

He woke up in Busan again.

* * *

This loop, he ditched Linda and Limbani, and holed up in a different Busan hotel room to spend four days reading up on multiverse theory and quantum physics. There was no point in trying for a control group anymore; it didn’t seem to matter who he interacted with, if he interacted with no one at all, if he made big changes or small changes or no changes. The same four days looped no matter what, as inexorably as time had used to march forwards and forwards and forwards.

So this time he went all out, got a room at the nicest hotel, asked for the best suite. Why not, right? It wasn’t like the money mattered, and he might as well live it up while he could. He wasn’t a dirt-poor MIT grad student anymore, he could pull his all-nighters in style and comfort.

“Treat yoself,” he said to himself, and emptied the entire minibar fridge onto the enormous, plush bed.

He started with the legit, reputable academic databases and a couple of books that hit the basics. Physics, theoretical or otherwise, had never been his thing, but he could catch up enough to get by. It brought back the old rush of learning something new, the thrill and joy of using the intellect no one credited him with having when they first saw him. He could forget about the time loops and Wakanda and his plans, and just live in that rush, pretend he was starting on some project or paper for school, at work on something that would make his coddled white classmates and his racist professors look at him with respect, that would make them realize Erik Stevens wasn’t just an affirmative action charity case, that he hadn’t been _given_ anything. That he’d taken every last fucking inch, and turned them into miles.

The rush didn’t last. Current physics had no answers to offer him about what to do when the arrow of time turned into a circle. He sent some emails to a few professors and researchers on the slim hope that he’d get a useful response before the loop reset, but he doubted any help would come from that quarter.

If he was out of legit sources of information, it was time to turn to the internet’s crackpot theories. He cracked open a tiny bottle of whiskey from the minibar and started drinking, then he washed it down with coffee. He got four pages deep into his results before he needed another tiny bottle of whiskey. Then he hit a rabbit hole of theories about aliens and Captain America being a time traveler instead of just a thawed out meat popsicle, and it was time to try a tiny bottle of vodka. The “we all live in a computer simulation, wake up sheeple!!!!” blog posts demanded yet more vodka. These bottles, thought Erik, were frustratingly fucking tiny.

He just kept drinking after that. The steady buzz was pretty much all that kept him from throwing his laptop into the room’s lavish hot tub. That and the fact that some of these wild-ass theories were pretty fucking funny. A sorcerer supreme? Yeah, whatever. And Erik was goddamned Harry Potter. He kept looking until he passed out from the booze, and then he got up, downed some coffee and looked some more, and didn’t find anything but a bunch of theories and thought experiments, no hard data, and what wasn’t theory was just straight up science fiction.

So whatever. Maybe he’d try some bullshit solution out of a movie or TV show, why not. He looked at the mask he’d re-appropriated from the museum, sitting innocently on the end table he’d left it on. It was just a mask, probably. There was no such thing as magic, or curses. But if this time loop wasn’t the result of any Wakandan tech, maybe…it was worth a shot.

He destroyed the mask, broke it apart and burned it. Nothing happened other than the smell of burning hair and leather making him cough. He waited and watched as it all burned down to ash and charred bits of leather and bone anyway. 

The loop ran down, then it began again, back in Busan in a hotel bed with Linda. Erik turned his face into the pillow and screamed.

* * *

Erik went back to the original plan, or at least a variation on it. He wasn’t going to find any answers for what was happening to him in Busan. He had to get to Wakanda.

So, process of elimination: what other catalysts could have started this fucked up, recursive reaction? What other weird shit had happened to him the first time around? It wasn’t the mask, and everything he’d come into contact with in Wakanda had just been technology. Really advanced technology, but just technology, wholly explicable via vibranium and nanites and a new form of quantum computing. Everything he’d come into contact with, except for the heart-shaped herb.

He set a new objective: learn everything he could about the weird glowing herb.

This time, when the priestess offered him the cup of eerily glowing liquid, he put his hand up. “Hey, wait up. I’m not putting some weird glowing shit into my body without knowing more about what the fuck it is.”

“This is a preparation of the heart-shaped herb, an ancient recipe first given to us by Bast—”

“Uh huh, that’s the fairy tale. What’s the real story?”

The priestess narrowed her eyes at him. “That _is_ the real story.”

“Thought Wakanda was better than believing some backwards bullshit like that. How’s the herb work? And your answer better not be magic.”

“It is some combination of the properties of the plant itself, and the vibranium-enriched soil of Wakanda. This is the only place the herb grows, and thus far, we have found no way to synthetically replicate it.”

“Okay, I get that. Makes sense. Is it safe for me to take?”

Now the priestess hesitated. “I cannot answer that.”

“Wrong answer,” said Erik, and stepped closer to her, an unspoken threat. “Try again.”

She glared at him, and didn’t back down. “I have no control over how your body and spirit respond to the herb. There is a reason the herb is not given to many people. Some respond well, some do not. Some have died. Taking it is a risk, and an act of faith.”

That sounded like some woo-woo bullshit, but whatever.

“So what happens when I drink this?”

“We will bury you there,” she said, gesturing toward the pit of red sand. “And you will visit the plane of the ancestors. I cannot tell you what form that will take for you. Once the vision is complete, you will have the strength of the Black Panther, granted by the herb, and by Bast.”

He didn’t see how a bad trip plus super strength could possibly lead to his current time loop situation, but maybe his subconscious would have some answers for him in the “vision.”

“Alright,” he said, and drank from the small cup.

The mixture didn’t taste good, but it didn’t taste notably bad either, and felt weird going down, something like a simultaneous overdose of caffeine and a shot of strong liquor. The sensation was somehow a surprise every time. It hit fast too: by the time the sand was closing in over his head, he was gone.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing in front of apartment 1401 again, and when he walked inside, his dad was still there, just like he always was, pacing back and forth in front of the windows. His shadow was strange, and the view outside—

“What are you doing? You have been here over dozens of times, and that should not be possible.”

“Yeah, well, you’re dead, and there’s no such thing as ghosts, so I don’t appreciate you telling me what is and isn’t possible. You’re not even real, just my subconscious or some shit.”

“I am very real, my son.”

Erik crossed his arms. “Prove it.”

“Where are you, right now? Your body, I mean. In Wakanda?”

“Yeah. In the Hall of Kings.”

“When you return to the Citadel, find my old room. Inside, on the left side of the window sill, there is a tile that will slide loose. There’s a small hollow there, where I put a tiny, ancient vibranium panther. I found it in the gardens when I was a child, and I always thought it was a present straight from Bast and my ancestors. There is your proof.”

Erik returned to his body, gasping for air. _Breathe_ , said the priests and priestesses, as if to remind him, and Erik breathed.

* * *

He asked to be shown N’Jobu’s old room in the Citadel, fully expecting to hear that it had since been turned into an office, or a storage room or something. But no, there was still a small suite of rooms, kept clean and untouched, as if awaiting his dad’s return. There were even old clothes in the closet still, old enough now that they hadn’t held on to his dad’s scent, and a few books in various different languages stacked neatly on the dresser, scraps of paper sticking out of them to mark some of the pages.

The suite of rooms being preserved like this pulsed with some meaning, like infrasound on the edge of Erik’s awareness. Was it T’Chaka’s grief, or his guilt, that left these rooms feeling like a museum exhibit? It didn’t matter, there was no advantage or intelligence to be gained in wondering about it. T’Chaka and his dad were both dead now.

There was one long, wide window that took up most of the room’s outward facing wall, so point one for the bad trip. Erik went to the left side of the window sill. He ignored the sweeping view of the Golden City spread out beneath him, and felt carefully under and around the sill for a loose tile. It didn’t take long to find it.

 _Breathe_ , Erik had to remind himself.

The tile slid free, and just as his dad had said, there was a small hole there, and nestled inside it was a rough and expressively hewn little black panther statue, dense with the weight of vibranium.

 _Well, fuck_.

* * *

“Do you believe me now?” asked his dad the next time around.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” he answered, bereft of any other explanations for what was happening. So okay. The afterlife or whatever was real. Was that any weirder than this goddamn time loop?

Dad sat down cross-legged on the floor, the way he used to when it was time to help Erik with his homework, or when they read together. “So tell me what is happening.”

Erik sat down with him, and did. He only had time to see the dismay and regret dawn on his dad’s face before he was called back to life again.

* * *

The second he walked through the apartment door the next time, Dad told him, “You must stop this, Erik.” He was still sitting on the floor, now with his head in his hands.

“If I knew how to stop this fucking time loop, I would!”

“That is not what I mean! This—this _war_ you have begun among our people! You must stop it!”

“Oh, that is some bullshit coming from you. Wasn’t this what you wanted? I read the journal you left! You were gonna start a war too, arming our oppressed brothers and sisters! I’m just doing it bigger and better. Faster. A change is gonna come, they kept saying. Well, how long we been waiting? How long we gotta wait? Nah. I’m _making_ that change come. No more fucking waiting.”

Dad shook his head. “This is not what I wanted. I wanted Wakanda to give others the weapons to free themselves, I had no intention of conquering Wakanda. Maybe I would have challenged T’Chaka, eventually, but—”

Erik laughed. “Then you were lying to yourself, Pops. You were working with Klaue, come on. You know he was hired to kill the king, right?”

Erik didn’t know if his dad _had_ known that, actually. SHIELD’s files hadn’t said who’d hired Klaue, so either they didn’t know, or it was HYDRA. Or maybe even his dad.

“And he didn’t succeed. I offered him an alternative that would save his life, and would get his employers what they really wanted. It would have made no difference to my plans, letting Klaue have a tiny percentage of the vibranium, and Wakanda would have been safe, T’Chaka would have been safe—”

So, not his dad. But holy shit, that was some naïveté. No goddamn wonder he’d gotten his ass killed.

“He blew up a bunch of Wakandans!”

“Don’t tell me that matters to you, I see some of what you’re doing out there,” said his dad, jerking his head towards the apartment’s TV.

“What, you get cable in the afterlife?” Erik shook his head. “I’m willing to make some sacrifices for freedom, and I ain’t lying to myself about it. This is a war, and it wasn’t Black folks or Wakanda that started it. We’re sure as hell gonna finish it though.”

He saw Dad’s face twist in anger and pain, and then Erik returned to the sandpit, gasping.

“What did you see?” asked the priestess.

It was the first time in who knew how many loops she’d ever bothered to ask. So, you know, fuck her. Why was she interested now and not before?

“I didn’t see anything,” he told her.

Her hands were tight on his shoulders, her nails digging in, claw-like. “Nothing? Not T’Chaka, or N’Jobu? None of the other Panthers?”

“No,” he said, still off-balance and breathing hard. He pulled away from her, but was caught from behind by one of the other priests.

“Then you are not fit to be a king of Wakanda,” said the priestess, and then, before he could react, she slid a dagger into his heart.

 _So this is new_ , he thought, perversely excited by the change of pace, and watched his blood turn the red sand black.

* * *

The next time Erik entered the apartment, Dad was standing at the window, looking out at—Erik blinked, and really noticed the view outside for the first time. It was Oakland and the Bay, yeah, but the sky was something else, swirling with purple and blue auroras, their lights reflecting strangely in the Bay. The dark sky glittered with more stars than he’d ever seen shine through the light pollution of the real Oakland. He looked, and didn’t see any of the panthers the priestess had mentioned. But when he focused on the reflections in the water, or the negative space of darkness between the shimmering blue and purple waves in the sky—

“This isn’t what I wanted for you,” said Dad, and Erik jerked and turned away from the unsettling view outside.

“What, the throne? Think I’ve got as much a right to it as you did, or as T’Challa does.”

“Not the throne. The projects, then all this war, all this fighting...I wanted better for you. I should have sent you to Wakanda after your mother went to prison. Ramonda would have kept you safe—”

“Yeah, I don’t think Auntie likes me much. Uncle James sure as hell didn’t. Uncle T’Chaka didn’t. They _left_ me.”

“Ramonda would have welcomed you, had I sent you to Wakanda,” insisted Dad, clutching at his head and beginning to pace.

“Sure. Then I’d have grown up with a vibranium spoon in my mouth while my mom was in prison, while all my friends in Oakland, all the other kids like me all around the world, suffered under the yoke of oppression. I’d have been, what, lounging around that palace, when cops shot Sean Bell for _nothing_ , at his damn bachelor party. Would I have even known his name? Or Amadou Diallo’s? Or Oscar Grant’s? Huh? Would they have mattered to me? Or would I have been living large in Wakanda, doing jack shit for anybody not stuck in this pretty glass bubble with me. That ain’t _better_ , that doesn’t fix _shit_. It’s just living a lie.”

Erik had wanted that once, sure. He’d spent the longest time thinking someone would come back for him, that one day he’d be stolen away by Wakandan royalty and go live as the prince his dad had always told him he was.

Then he’d read the police report on his dad’s murder, and the autopsy report. Put them together with his dad’s journals. It didn’t take a detective to figure it out after that. Wakandans had killed his dad. He’d held out some hope that it was all some kind of mistake, had considered all kinds of fairy tale explanations about evil advisors and people plotting against the royal family. That hope had died a little more every week, every month, every year, and it had died for good after the first time he’d tried to get to Wakanda only to be turned away.

The police, knowing nothing about undercover princes or Wakanda, had pinned his dad’s murder on Uncle James for lack of any other suspects, and Uncle James had disappeared. Erik had almost gone to the cops to tell them the truth, that Uncle James couldn’t have killed his dad, that his dad had been a prince and it must have been Wakandan traitors who’d killed him, because maybe then Uncle James would come back, would come get Erik...but who’d believe him? And maybe Uncle James hadn’t killed his dad, but he was the only other person who’d known where the vibranium was, and it had all been gone by the time the cops turned the place over. And since Uncle James hadn’t been found dead on the floor too…

Still, he’d hoped, he’d waited... _maybe Uncle James would come back for him, once the heat died down, maybe_...But he’d never come back, and no one in the neighborhood, or in the crew he used to run with, had heard a fucking thing from him.

Erik had realized it eventually: no one was going to come for him. He’d been left behind on purpose. Now Erik knew why.

So fuck his dad’s _woulda coulda shouldas_.

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t have fixed anything,” said his dad. He looked up at Erik, tears already rolling down his cheeks. “But can you blame a father for wanting a kinder life for his son?”

He opened his mouth to argue, to call bullshit, but it was too late. _Breathe_ , he heard, from the world of the living, and he was back in the sandpit.

* * *

“Did you see the Panthers?” asked the priestess when he woke. She stood over him, and no one helped him up out of the sandpit. He stumbled to his feet, coughing out dust.

“I—maybe. No. I don’t know. I was in me and my dad’s old apartment in Oakland—”

“The ancestors have abandoned you. You are no king.”

Her mouth went tight and flat, and okay, Erik knew what was coming, so he lunged for her, but this time, the blow came from behind, something heavy and hard to the back of his skull, an explosion of pain. He heard a sickening crunch, god, that fucking horrible crunch, too close, and then everything went dark.

* * *

“Killed by the priests and priestesses. That is new,” said Dad when Erik walked in during the next loop. Dad was on the couch, like he was watching TV, but the screen was dark.

“At this rate, every single person in Wakanda’s gonna kill me at least once,” said Erik. He collapsed onto the couch beside Dad, and marveled at how real it felt. It even had that spot that sagged from that time Erik had jumped on the couch and broken a couple of the springs.

“You don’t consider that a sign that you are perhaps doing something wrong?”

Not really. Systems were chaotic. But Erik had gamed other, harder systems, and won. He’d beat this one too.

“I’ll get it right,” he assured his dad. “Got nothing but time, don’t I? Why’re you here instead of with the ancestors or whatever? Or are you with the ancestors when I’m not here?”

“No, I am always here,” he answered, looking out the window. “I am not sure why though. I suppose I never…believed, as my brother did.”

“And that’s reason enough to be stuck here for twenty years?”

“Has it been so long? Time is…I don’t think it flows the same here. You know, sometimes you are a child when you walk through that door. My little boy.” Dad smiled, a brief and pained grimace compared to the bright thing he used to greet Erik with after school. “Sometimes you are an adolescent. Sometimes a young man, as you are now. I am sorry to have missed so much,” he whispered.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tried to run a revolution out of our apartment,” snarled Erik, and got up off the couch to pace the too-small apartment. He wondered where he’d end up if he walked out the door, if he broke the windows and jumped. Somehow, he got the feeling it’d be a bad idea to try.

Dad looked at him, more pain than love in his eyes. “What did they make you into, my son? All these scars, this rage, this _violence_ —”

“What did they _make_ me? Who the fuck’s _they_? I made myself!” he said, pounding his chest with one fist. “Wasn’t anyone else there, was there?”

Dad took that like a blow, but Erik wasn’t about to stop now.

“Don’t you dare look at me like I’m the monster here. I was an _orphan_ , in the _projects_. I had _nothing_. And I still made it to Annapolis. MIT after that. Got into the Navy SEALs. I had to be better than perfect. I had to do every single thing right! I had to be the smartest and the strongest, and all along I had to keep my mouth shut and not upset any of those official white folks in charge, and _still_ —”

Still he’d watched mediocre white guys get ahead of him, still he’d been stopped by cops all the damn time, still he’d been condescended to every step of the way. Decorated officer and graduate degree from MIT, and goddamn prince of Wakanda, not that anybody else had known that, and _still_ : he was just another thug to white America. In America, nothing mattered but the color of his skin. Dad may have spent a few years in America, but that obviously hadn’t been enough to really hammer home that truth.

“You think any of that was easy? You think I’m a failure? Well fuck y—”

He came to in the sandpit, heart pounding and a scream fighting to get out of his throat.

* * *

The next time, Erik didn’t bother going inside the apartment. He tried going outside instead, but the architecture of the familiar apartment building turned Escher-like, and always deposited him right back in front of Apartment 1401.

Fuck that. He still wasn’t going inside. He sat outside the door instead, as if he’d come home from school and had forgotten his key.

Which was when he learned that, apparently, there was a way to fail this fucking ritual, and he just did it. He could hear, distantly, the priests and priestesses urging him to breathe, to get up, but he couldn’t, the sand weighed so heavy on his chest, and he just couldn’t find the strength to lift it, to fill his lungs.

It was the easiest death so far: a gentle, inevitable sinking into darkness.

* * *

He walked through the door the next time.

“N’Jadaka—Erik. Come here, please,” said Dad, in a terribly small voice.

His father had not been an old man when he’d died, but right now, the lines of regret carved deep on his face made him look ancient. Dad looked bigger too, for some reason, and when he opened his arms, Erik’s feet were moving before he could think better of it. When Dad’s arms came tight around him, Erik realized: he wasn’t in his adult body right now. It didn’t feel as strange as it should have.

“You are not a failure, my son. I am proud of all you have accomplished.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” he said, and kissed the top of Erik’s head. Erik couldn’t remember the last time someone had done that. Maybe Dad himself, when Erik had been doing his homework before Dad had sent him outside to play that last night. “I love you. So many times you have returned to me, and I have not yet said it. I will say it now, and hope you know the truth of it, that you know that it will always be true. I love you.”

For just a few seconds, everything in Erik’s universe was aligned just right; the past and future didn’t matter, irrelevant to the innocent and perfect present of childhood, the sweet lie that nothing could possibly go wrong as long as his dad held him. The moment didn’t last long. Erik wasn’t a child anymore.

But it was still his child self’s voice that asked, “Then why’d you leave me?”

“I didn’t know…”

Erik pulled away, and now he and his dad were the same size again. “Yeah, you did. You knew you were starting a war.”

“Do you say I was wrong to do it? It is what you are doing now. Wakanda must help free our oppressed brethren, we cannot hoard our power and knowledge. You said it the first time. _We_ are not the lost ones.”

And yet, here was Dad, stuck in afterlife-Oakland in the same apartment he’d died in. Here was Erik, stuck in the same four days. They weren’t wrong though. They _weren’t_. They just had to get the plan right.

“You weren’t wrong, you just fucked it up, got caught. You’re not the first person to be fucked over by counterintelligence.”

Dad winced. “Ah yes, ‘James.’ That did catch me by surprise, I admit. T’Chaka outmaneuvered me.”

“Nice euphemism. He _murdered_ you.”

“That too.” Dad didn’t seem too upset about that. “But I pulled a gun on James—Zuri. T’Chaka acted to save his life. I cannot entirely fault him for that.” Erik sure as hell could, but before he could say so, Dad shrugged and continued, “What’s done is done.”

“Would you do all of it again, if you had the chance?”

“Not if it would mean leaving you alone.”

It was a kind lie. But Erik knew what he’d sacrifice in the name of this fight, and he saw it now in his dad too. Sentiment was for other people, not for them. They couldn’t afford it. Dad was lying to himself if he thought they could.

“Yeah, right. Shoulda thought of that the first time around, Pops. If you’d succeeded, you didn’t wonder what it would mean to throw me into a war?”

Dad closed his eyes and nodded, looking old and sad again. “The war seems to find you no matter what, my son,” he said, and then the war called Erik back, saying _breathe_ , _breathe_.

* * *

He was spinning his wheels, just going back to Dad again and again, but he didn’t care. He had the time, didn’t he? He had an eternity of the same four days until he figured this out. Might as well ask his dad everything he’d ever wanted to ask him while he could.

“What would you do if you were me right now, living your own personal Groundhog Day?”

“I would not plunge my people into civil war. I would not kill my own kin.”

“Right. Cuz your plan was gonna be so bloodless. There’s no such thing as a bloodless coup. Someone always bleeds.”

“But not—”

“Oh, I see how it is.” Erik laughed. “Everyone else was supposed to fight and die, Wakanda was just gonna sit pretty behind its jungles and its mountains and its walls, and let the proxy wars burn themselves out. Wakanda was gonna keep its hands _clean_. Well, Klaue _killed_ Wakandans to get you your vibranium. Your hands aren’t clean, Wakanda’s hands aren’t clean. They aren’t ever gonna be clean, not after hundreds of years of hiding and doing nothing.”

His dad didn’t deny it, but he didn’t say anything either, and Erik’s disappointment burned, bitter and choking like bile.

“I thought you’d get it,” Erik said. “But you don’t.”

Erik got up, and walked out of the apartment, and then the world tilted. He rose up from the sandpit, shoving past the priests and priestesses, throwing torches on the heart-shaped herb plants as he went.

 _Fuck this_. His dad didn’t have any answers for him. Not about the loops, and not about how to do this right. He’d have to find answers somewhere else. Maybe Uncle James would have some answers in the next loop.

* * *

He got himself in front of T’Challa and the rest of the council on autopilot. Erik had some sympathy for the internet nut jobs who were convinced the world was a simulation now; after so many loops, Erik could manipulate events as easily as if he was playing a video game.

“Who are you?” asked one of the council members.

“N’Jadaka, son of N’Jobu.” Disbelief bounced and echoed around the throne room, though T’Challa stayed silent, something like fear in his eyes, and denial in the way he clenched his fist. Yeah, he knew something about what had gone down between their dads. “Ask Zuri. Bring Zuri here. He knows who I am.”

“Lies! Why should we humor this interloper—” said the Queen Mother, furious, already raising her hand to gesture at the Dora Milaje guards.

W’Kabi held out the ring with the royal seal. “He had this, Queen Mother.”

There was a moment’s silence as everyone studied the ring, twirling lazily on its chain, shining in the light. Some of the council members murmured in disquiet and others shouted, and T’Challa stayed silent.

“And who’s to say he hasn’t stolen it!” cried the Queen Mother. It wasn’t the first time she’d made that accusation, but it pissed him off every time.

“Who’s to say he has?” asked the guy with the fuck-off big lip plate.

The tiny old lady banged her cane on the floor. “Bring Zuri, let us see what he has to say. Then we will know what to do with the interloper,” said one of the elders.

The others nodded and murmured in agreement, but Erik didn’t care about them. He watched T’Challa. T’Challa watched him back. Erik kept his back straight and his chin up, like always, like he was at parade rest. T’Challa looked like a statue on that throne, one that would crumble with one hard hit. Erik was tempted to try.

T’Challa tapped and twisted at his bracelet. “Zuri. Please come to the throne room immediately.W’Kabi, take...N’Jadaka to a holding cell. We will question him before the council later.”

After a quick questioning glance at Erik, W’Kabi moved to comply. So W’Kabi wasn’t gonna stick his neck out for Erik just yet, alright. That was fine.

But this wasn’t going to work if they questioned Zuri without Erik here. Erik could see how it’d play out from here: they’d ask Zuri some questions, Zuri would lie, and T’Challa wouldn’t call him on it. They’d leave Erik in holding, or turf him out of Wakanda, and the status quo would be preserved, and he’d have wasted a loop. He had to be here when they questioned Zuri.

“No! I want to talk to him,” said Erik as W’Kabi started to guide him out of the throne room.

“You are in no position to make demands, or to bargain,” said the Queen Mother.

Damn, Auntie really didn’t like him, huh? But she had a point. He’d had enough interactions with T’Challa by now to know how he responded to Erik’s demands. Sentiment though...that worked on his soft-hearted cousin.

So Erik kept his focus on T’Challa. “Please,” he said. He couldn’t manage to soften his voice enough to make it a real plea. “He was like an uncle to me, and I never saw him after—”

T’Challa interrupted him before he could finish the sentence, and Erik almost smirked. _Yeah, I’ll bet you don’t want to let me finish that sentence with “after the Black Panther killed my dad.”_

“Fine. You may stay,” said T’Challa. Awkward silence descended for long seconds while they waited for Zuri to arrive. “You called him uncle?” asked T’Challa.

“Yeah. He was my dad’s friend, he was always around. Picked me up from school sometimes, helped me with my homework.”

Fury settled on T’Challa’s face, though Erik didn’t know why. None of that was a lie. He tensed, waited for T’Challa to lash out at him, maybe say the Wakandan equivalent of _off with his head!_ But T’Challa didn’t.

“Your mother?”

“In prison. She died there when I was still a kid.”

“My comfort for your loss,” offered T’Challa, his eyes still furious, but his voice soft and sincere. “Your losses.”

“Uh, thanks, cuz,” said Erik, eyeing the way T’Challa was gripping the arms of the throne. The thing had to be made of vibranium, but Erik still almost expected it to crack.

They all waited for Zuri in increasingly tense silence, T’Challa’s palpable, miserable anger filling the room more than even words could. When Zuri arrived, it became clear that Erik wasn’t the target of T’Challa’s anger: Zuri was.

Erik waved with his still bound hands. “Hi, Uncle James. Remember me?”

Zuri’s face went slack with shock, and his stride into the throne room faltered.

“Zuri. This man claims to be N’Jadaka, my uncle N’Jobu’s son. He says you can confirm his identity.”

“And he claims N’Jobu is dead,” added the Queen Mother.

Zuri’s eyes darted around the room, and never rested long on Erik. “T’Challa, I told you—”

“Is this man who he says he is? As your king, I order you to answer. Truthfully.”

Zuri finally looked at him. The almost 25 years since Erik last saw Uncle James—Zuri—seemed to have weighed him down: his shoulders slumped and his face drooped in pronounced wrinkles. The disconcertingly kind-eyed gangbanger was gone, as surely as a younger and more innocent Erik was. Zuri did recognize him though. Erik could tell by the way Zuri looked at him like he was a fast-approaching natural disaster.

“Both your father and N’Jobu wanted it kept quiet, but…yes. N’Jobu had a son while on assignment in America.”

“And Prince N’Jobu?” asked one of the elders.

“Killed in America,” answered Zuri.

“Now why was that kept quiet? Or was it covered up?” demanded the small, old woman swathed in robes, banging querulously with her cane.

“The King—T’Chaka, I mean, commanded it. I obeyed. No one knew but us, and two of the Dora.”

“And me,” said Erik. “When I found my dad’s body lying in our apartment.”

Yeah, he was twisting the knife now. Watching Zuri flinch was almost as satisfying as killing Zuri had been, that first time. Seeing T’Challa glare at Zuri in furious betrayal though...Erik didn’t know what to do with that.

“Was he at least buried properly?” asked the Queen Mother. She was sitting now, as if in some shock.

An old anger rose up again in Erik, and the bitterness of it still tasted fresh, still made him want to scream and break things the way he had when they’d first told him there would be no funeral for his dad.

“Dunno what you consider proper. But I don’t know. I didn’t get to go to his funeral. They never told me what happened to his body.”

“What,” said T’Challa.

“I was an orphaned kid, you think they told me shit? I got shuffled off to a group home, and the coroner held onto my dad’s body for the autopsy. Took forever, ‘cause they were backed up, and who cares about one more Black man dead in the projects? They did the autopsy eventually and no one claimed the body, I guess, so he probably got cremated, or buried in some mass funeral.”

Shit, was _that_ why Dad was stuck in afterlife-Oakland? Was he gonna be stuck in afterlife-Oakland forever unless he was buried in Wakanda? Maybe so, judging by how horrified his aunt looked, and the cries of dismay from the council.

“A prince of Wakanda, buried in some pauper’s grave, in America—it’s not right.”

“Yeah? But it’s right for all the rest of our Black kin all over the world? It’s right for my ancestors who drowned in the ocean trying to get off slave ships? It’s right for my ancestors who were hung from trees and left to rot there?”

“Enough!” shouted T’Challa.

Erik wasn’t going to shut up just because T’Challa didn’t want to hear it, and he was about to say so before he got a look at T’Challa’s face. T’Challa’s wrath wasn’t focused on him, it was on Zuri. And Zuri—

“I have known, for some time, that there would be no forgiveness for this,” whispered Zuri. “I will ask for it anyway. I am so sorry—”

“And I will not grant it!” said T’Challa at the same time as Erik said, “Fuck you.”

“You _left him there_. A child, who had no one else!” continued T’Challa.

Shit, T’Challa wasn’t just mad at Zuri, he was mad at Zuri on _Erik’s behalf_. Maybe that was just T’Challa’s weakness for sentiment again. Weakness for sentiment or not, a small part of Erik appreciated the validation.

“It was the King’s will,” said Zuri, bowing his head.

“It was wrong! Royal or not royal, orders or no orders, it does not matter! It was wrong! Unshackle him,” ordered T’Challa. “Cousin, I know there is no way to make this right with words. If there is some justice you would seek for the wrongs done against you, know that I will do whatever is in my power to grant it.”

The terrible thing was, T’Challa meant it. Anyone else, and Erik would have said it was an offer meant for show, a platitude. But not with T’Challa. He wasn’t a great liar, and he just about glowed with honor and goodness, all big earnest eyes. He was too fucking naive by half, or maybe just impulsive. If Erik could’ve had more than four days, he’d have taken advantage of it, strung this out slower and longer to get on T’Challa’s good side, then put his plan in motion. But he didn’t. He had four days, and that wasn’t near enough time for a long con.

“I challenge you for the throne. That’s my justice.”

Denials rang out in the throne room, but T’Challa took Erik’s challenge with calm sorrow, the patronizing asshole. He could have at least looked a little worried.

“Very well. I suppose that is the least of what you are owed. Tomorrow, then.”

“But my king, a new challenge cannot be arranged on such short notice!” said one of the council members. T’Challa dismissed the complaint with a wave of his hand.

“A large audience is not required. Is there anything else you need, cousin?” he asked, all courtesy, as if Erik hadn’t just challenged him to a duel to the death. Was it manners, idiocy, or confidence? He couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, Erik would take advantage.

“I want a word with Zuri, alone. Promise I won’t lay a hand on him.”

“We have more questions for him now, I think. But once we are done, of course. W’Kabi, show N’Jadaka to—to N’Jobu’s old rooms please. You may stay there for the night, if that’s acceptable.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

* * *

It was hours later when the Dora Milaje brought Zuri by. He looked shrunken in his grand robes, and the past few hours must have been rough, because he looked about ten years older too.

“Hey, Uncle James.”

Zuri flinched at the name, but he met Erik’s eyes. “I am so sorry, Erik. Truly. I thought of you often—”

“Like that matters. You’re a priest or something now, huh?”

“Shaman is perhaps the better word.”

“Alright, Shaman. Tell me about the plane of the ancestors. Tell me what I’m supposed to see.”

This clearly wasn’t the conversation Zuri had expected to have. Whatever. Erik wasn’t here for a heart to heart, he needed intel. The ancestral plane was the only other thing close to the level of weirdness that was living the same four days over and over again, and it had to have some answers on how to break out of this loop. His dad obviously didn’t have those answers, not when he was stuck in the room where he died.

“So certain of winning? You are already planning to take the heart-shaped herb?”

“I like to be prepared. And I’m at a disadvantage here, so c’mon, level the playing field for me some. It’s literally the least you can do for me. What’s it supposed to be like?”

“It is meant to be different for everybody. But the usual guidance is to think of your most recent ancestor, or whoever you have the strongest connection with, and then you will be able to speak with them, see their spirit at peace.”

Erik didn’t think his dad’s spirit was at peace, but whatever.

“That’s it? I just gotta think about who I want to see?”

“Mostly, yes. Bast has some say in it as well, of course. There are some who have not been allowed entry to the plane of the ancestors at all. A prayer would not go amiss.”

Praying to a cat goddess. Yeah, right. “Thanks, that’s all I wanted to know,” he said, and nodded to the guards.

The Dora Milaje moved to escort Zuri out, but Zuri stopped them. “Wait, truly? That’s all? Erik, there is more that I would like to—more that I _need_ to tell—”

“What the hell do you think you can tell me that I don’t already know, huh? You knew I didn’t have anyone else, but you followed your king’s orders and left me alone in Oakland anyway, I get it. The king told you to leave me behind, and now the king’s telling you to say sorry. All part of the job, right? None of it was real.”

“It was real. I did care for you, Erik. A great deal,” said Zuri, his voice low and shaky.

 _This is when he brings up old times, this is when he tries the old ‘remember when?’ play to get on my good side, just in case I’m his new king. ‘Remember all those times I took you to the library, remember how I didn’t leave your side after your mama got locked up when your daddy was too messed up to look after you, remember how I took you to the barbershop with me and let you make a mess with the shaving cream?’_ But Zuri didn’t say another word, and the memories just welled up in the silence between them, fast and deadly, like a boat taking on water.

“You think that makes it better? That makes it worse. Get out! Get him out!”

* * *

He won the challenge, of course. By now, beating T’Challa was easy. Erik had a pretty huge advantage, after all. It had stopped feeling especially satisfying a dozen or more loops ago.

This time, T’Challa was bleeding out at his feet. “Please…”

“Too late to yield,” said Erik. Who knew how many loops, and T’Challa hadn’t ever yielded. Erik respected him for that.

T’Challa shook his head with one labored jerk. “No. I know…you have…reason to be angry. I know. But please…take care of our people.”

 _They aren’t my people_ , Erik almost said, reflexive, because this wasn’t about Wakanda, this was about the _world_ , because T’Chaka had abandoned him and Uncle James had abandoned him and even his fucking _dad_ had abandoned him—but it was too late. T’Challa was already gone.

* * *

When it was time to take the heart-shaped herb again, Erik kept his thoughts focused on his uncle T’Chaka. He wasn’t really all that interested in talking to him—he’d probably give Erik some weepy apology that didn’t mean shit—but T’Chaka was the only other recent Wakandan ancestor Erik really knew. If he wanted to get to the real ancestral plane, to look for answers there, he’d have to start with T’Chaka. Which was fine, Erik could do whatever it took to get answers. But he didn’t bother to pray to Bast.

When he stopped feeling the weight of the sand covering him, he stood up and opened his eyes, not to that old apartment in Oakland, but to the rumble of thunder and the pounding of rain on a wide, grassy plain. The sky was dark with heavy clouds, still swirling with the deep blues and purples he’d seen out of the apartment window all the other times, and there were restless panthers pacing around a tree, some of them yowling and screaming.

One of the panthers resolved into a white-haired old man: T’Chaka. He looked old and small, feeble, the furthest thing possible from the Black Panther boogeyman of Erik’s old childhood nightmares.

“Hey, Uncle. Recognize me?”

“Who…?” Erik walked closer, and saw understanding dawn on T’Chaka’s face. “N’Jobu’s child.”

“Yeah. The one you abandoned after killing your brother.”

“Erik—”

“That’s what my momma named me, yeah. My dad named me N’Jadaka. Taught me about Wakanda, how I was a prince, part of the Panther Tribe. I didn’t grow up like a prince though, not like your boy.”

“You did well though. I…checked up on you, every so often.”

“Yeah? So, you checked up on me after my ma died in prison? No one told me, y’know that? I got together the money to finally call her, and that’s how I found out she was dead.”

T’Chaka closed his eyes as if in pain. Erik wasn’t about to give him any mercy now.

“You checked up on me, when my one of my foster families wasn’t feeding me enough? You checked up on me, when I was getting my ass beat ‘cause I wouldn’t run with the gangbangers, ‘cause I was fixing to make something of myself?”

“You achieved much. Even in such dire circumstances. I was...proud to learn of that.”

Erik laughed, and he knew it sounded ugly, only a bare step up from a screaming sob. “So that makes it okay? Leaving me behind? Just ‘cause I clawed myself out of the projects and made something of myself, it’s okay?”

“No. No, I know it is not. My son has shouted at me many times now telling me just that. Why are you here, Erik? How?”

“Because I challenged your son and won.” Erik spread his arms wide and smiled. “You’re looking at the last Black Panther, Uncle.”

“No,” said T’Chaka, shaking his head. “No! You cannot be, or I would not keep seeing T’Challa again and again. What is happening among the living, what have you done? T’Challa comes to me, and says the same things, as if he has not already told me…”

Huh. That was good to know. The only ones who knew about the loop were Erik and the dead. That had to mean something…didn’t it? It maybe ruled out Shuri’s multiple universes theory…

“Yeah, I keep living the same four days over and over,” he said, and watched T’Chaka’s reaction carefully.

T’Chaka blinked at him, confused. “Like the American film Groundhog Day?”

“Gonna stay isolated from the entire rest of the word, but still watch American movies?” Erik rolled his eyes. Fucking hypocrite. “Whatever. Yeah, like Groundhog Day. You have any idea why the fuck that could be happening?”

“That should not be possible. The flow of time cannot be stopped, or diverted—”

“So that’s a no. Great talk, I’m glad you’re dead, sorry I wasn’t the one to do the deed,” he said, and turned to walk away. He should’ve known he wouldn’t find any answers here.

“Wait! Erik—N’Jadaka—I am sorry. You, your father—you are my greatest regrets. My gravest sins. I know there is no forgiveness possible, but I must say it. I am so very sorry, nephew.”

T’Chaka wept as he said it, tears and rain mingling on his face. He seemed genuine. It didn’t matter. Still, Erik wanted to know, wanted to ask now that he could.

“Why did you leave me?”

“I calculated that the risk was not worth it. The stability of Wakanda, of my rule…the maintenance of our traditions…that was all…more important. More necessary. I chose to be a good king, rather than a good man.”

The words dropped from T’Chaka’s mouth like heavy stones, but they sounded almost rote, like he’d said them before. Was this what he’d told T’Challa?

“Bullshit. _Bullshit_! There were other ways! If you gave a fuck, you coulda made sure I ended up with a decent family, set up some kinda trust. I know my dad wasn’t poor. You coulda left me with some other War Dogs, never told ‘em who I was. Hell, you could’ve lied to me, told me my daddy died in an accident, and brought me back to Wakanda, and no one would’ve known shit. But you _left_ me. You left me because fuck everyone else outside of Wakanda, right? There’s you, and there’s them, never mind that we got the same skin, never mind that we’re _dying_ out there.”

Regret etched itself deeper on T’Chaka’s face, on the slump of his shoulders. “I would undo it if I could.”

“Yeah, I bet you would now. Now that I’ve got a shot at ruling your precious country.”

“That is not the only reason why. But I was not given the gift you have been: the gift of a chance to make things right. You have been blessed, N’Jadaka. I hope you will use it.”

“Oh, I will.”

When he rose up from the dirt, and the priestess asked him, “What did you see, who did you see?” he answered her honestly.

“I saw T’Chaka, and he said I was blessed.” She couldn’t hide the flash of betrayal and despair that crossed her face, and so it felt even more satisfying when he said, “Burn it all,” and they obeyed him.

* * *

When Okoye didn’t make a move against him this time, Erik started to hope he was free and clear. Finally, there was no fight on the plains, no need to set the Border Tribe against the Dora Milaje. The priests and priestesses must have spread the word that Erik had T’Chaka’s blessing. Shit, if he’d known that was all it would take, he’d have done it sooner. Not that there weren’t still plenty of points of failure left though. They seemed to multiply, as if he were a juggler and someone kept tossing more and more balls at him. So he sent a couple jets to keep an eye on the mountains and take out the Jabari in case they tried some shit. He had the Queen Mother and the princess kept under guard in the Citadel, alive and unharmed, so no one had that excuse to turn on him.

Shit, he was _so close_ this time.

Then, when he was on the plains surrounding the vibranium mine, watching the cargo planes being loaded up and readied for deployment, the princess showed up to challenge him. Of fucking course.

“Now who the fuck let you out of your castle, Princess?”

“It’s cute that you think you could lock me up in my own palace, usurper. You have been here, what, a few days?”

She cocked her head, a sharp and vicious smile on her war-painted face. He could see the fury in every line of her, and for a second, it was so familiar it gave him a whole different kind of deja vu: that used to be him, skinny and young and vibrating with a rage he could never afford to show, not back then, not the way a coddled princess like her could now. He’d seen that same jaw clench in the mirror. Maybe it ran in the family.

“Sure,” he told her. “Just a few days. And that’s all I needed to take the throne.”

He’d been here a hell of a lot longer than just a few days, if you added up all the loops, so the taunt wasn’t exactly fair, not that she’d know it, and not that she cared. But it wasn’t like he’d taken the time to go looking for secret passageways or whatever the fuck loophole Shuri had used to slip out of the guarded Citadel, so there was another new and exciting avenue for failure, and who knew how many loops it’d take to run it down and figure out how to eliminate it. Fuck, he should’ve just killed Shuri and the Queen Mother. He knew where this was going now: another goddamned challenge.

“I challenge you, N’Jadaka, in the name of my brother, the rightful king of Wakanda!”

Yeah, there it was.

“You don’t want to do that, little girl.”

She didn’t rise to the bait, just repeated her challenge, calm and even, her voice loud enough to reach the Dora Milaje on guard and the men loading the cargo plane.

“Erik Killmonger Stevens, I challenge you for the throne of Wakanda.”

“Smart girl like you, you’re really here for that backwards trial by combat shit? Most advanced nation in the world, and _that’s_ how you wanna do this?”

He shook his head with exaggerated disappointment, but Shuri just smiled sweetly.

She was already starting to stalk carefully towards him with a gawky, feline sort of grace, as if he were her prey, and he went out to meet her on the even ground of the plain. The Dora Milaje and Border Tribe followed, then silently formed a circle around them and planted themselves as immovably as statues, their spears rooted to the ground or their shields at the ready. A not-so-subtle message: if he didn’t accept the challenge, they’d turn on him and this whole loop would be fucked.

So fine. One more challenge.

“Oh, so you’re being a proper American then, overthrowing a perfectly legitimate government with murder and violence, and then expecting everyone to play by your new rules,” said Shuri.

“Works, doesn’t it?” he said, and activated the Black Panther suit.

“For the colonizer,” she answered, flippant, before her voice went deadly, shakily furious, and she activated a suit of her own. “I did not make that suit for _you_.”

“I’m no colonizer, kid,” he snarled. “But okay, fine, let’s do this.”

It should’ve been an easy fight; she sure as hell hadn’t given him all that much trouble in other loops, explosions and blasts to the face aside. But she must have taken the heart-shaped herb this time around, because she matched his strength and beat his speed, and she used the advantages of the suit in unexpected ways, absorbing all his blows and reflecting them back on him so it felt like he was using himself as a punching bag.

Too late, he remembered that she had made the Black Panther suit he wore. She knew all its strengths and weaknesses. Erik hadn’t even gotten a goddamn instruction manual for his.

“As I said, I did not make that suit for _you_. I made it for my brother. I prioritized protection from sudden concussive blasts like explosions, and from projectiles like bullets with that version of the Black Panther suit,” she said between blows. Her tone was as measured and didactic as a lecturing professor’s, barely showing any strain when she landed a hit or when she took one. He swiped at her face with his claws and she leapt away. “Western weapons, you know? It’s not optimized or meant for serious combat with Wakandans.”

Erik fell back, retreating to get even more room between them, wary of what it was she was angling for. Over the course of the fight, Shuri and the slowly moving circle of impassive Wakandans around them had maneuvered them so they were near one of the waiting cargo planes.

“So? I’m guessing the same goes for your suit too.”

“Sure, but—”

Before she could finish, he rushed forwards in an attack, aiming to get her in a grapple so he could snap her neck. No way could the suit’s nanites prevent that. But she writhed and twisted and fought like a wild thing until they both fell apart, panting. She was grinning, full of innocent mischief, like this was just a friendly tussle instead of a fight to the death.

“I had time to make some adjustments,” she said, and then she barreled forwards to tackle him.

Their combined weight made Erik stagger backwards, and in his peripheral vision, he saw the circle of Wakandans around them break and leave a clear path to the cargo plane, whose quiet and idling engines suddenly turned on. Shuri blasted him with two fast bursts of the stored kinetic energy from her suit, one pulse of energy to his uncovered head that made his vision white out, and one to center mass that threw him backwards, until he was directly under the plane.

This probably wasn’t good, he thought through ringing ears and a spinning head, and he fumbled to engage the suit’s helmet and face mask. He didn’t know exactly how these planes worked, but whatever the output of their engines was—

“The Black Panther suit is not built to maintain integrity at such high temperatures for long periods of time,” she said, her voice already muffled by the boneshaking hum of the plane’s ignition.

The thrusters and lights began to glow blue, the same blue he’d seen in the sky that night T’Chaka had killed his dad, the brightness filling his entire field of vision and making his head throb. Then the engine’s exhaust hit him. Fuck. He was going to _cook_ under here, he was too close to the engine’s output. If only Shuri had just blown him up this time too.

“Cheater,” he croaked out. He was pretty sure this was against the challenge rules.

“Oh, so _now_ you want to follow tradition? No picking and choosing, usurper!”

He tried to stagger up, or roll away, but it was like trying to push against a hurricane force wind, and the _heat_...the temperature was rapidly climbing from standing in front of a fire to being _in_ the fire. She was right. The suit’s nanites weren’t keeping up against this kind of sustained heat, not at this close range. 

_You psycho bitch_ , thought Erik, distantly impressed. Who would have thought his little cousin was so fucking ruthless. He felt, for the first time, like maybe they really were kin.

Then the vibranium nanite skin of the Black Panther suit started to dissolve on and into his chest and he felt nothing but atavistic terror. The air he could barely drag in seared his throat and lungs. Slowly burning alive in this fucking Black Panther suit wasn’t a thing he wanted to be conscious for. So while he still could, he disengaged the helmet and mask. Better to die quick than to burn up slowly. Everything went white with a heat so profound his nerves couldn’t even process it.

* * *

When he woke up in Busan again, he woke up laughing.

“Erik? What…what the fuck’s so funny?” asked Linda groggily. Getting literally roasted alive by his little cousin, that was what. “Erik? _Erik_!”

He couldn’t stop laughing. Burned up under a plane by his own cousin. How _ridiculous_ , how totally fucking insane. He laughed and laughed, until he couldn’t even recognize the sound, until he could barely breathe, until tears streamed down his face. It wasn’t that funny, it really wasn’t, but he couldn’t fucking stop.

Linda slapped him, hard. He stopped laughing.

“What the _fuck_ , Erik!”

“I’m good, I’m good, sorry. Shit. Sorry,” he stammered, and stumbled out of bed into the bathroom. 

When he saw his reflection, he flinched, almost expecting to see some horror movie shit, burned skin and his skull peeking through. But it was just his face, the same as always, a little bit ruddy where Linda had just slapped him. He looked in his reflection’s wide eyes and breathed deep until he could fight the hysterical bubble of laughter in his chest back down, until his heart rate slowed.

Now there was a death that hadn’t even been on his goddamned radar. Lesson goddamn learned. He wouldn’t fuck with little cuz again, not more than he had to.

* * *

He maybe didn’t handle this loop so well. He tried to run it the same way as the last loop, because he’d gotten so close, he knew what to do now, he just had to take out Shuri and he’d be free and clear—but the scene in the throne room spiraled out of his control as soon as Zuri tried to make his excuses.

“It was the King’s will,” said Zuri again, and what good were his apologies when this tired, sick excuse was still the only truth at the core of all his guilt. _Just following orders, you know how it goes_.

The words “You could’ve come back for me!” tore their way out of Erik’s throat. Even with the guards and the chains, he lunged for Zuri, and managed to get one wild blow in before he was restrained again.

Erik hadn’t hit him that hard, but Zuri fell to his knees, and made no move to rise.

“You shouldn’t have left him,” said T’Challa, and all the air left Erik’s lungs. He flailed and staggered in the guards’ grip, and he didn’t know if it was T’Challa he wanted to fight first, or Zuri. “It was wrong! Royal or not royal, orders or no orders, it does not matter! It was wrong!” T’Challa rose from the throne to pace—no, to prowl. He whirled on the Queen Mother. “Did you know?”

“No,” she said, her face so stern and pained that her beauty turned almost ugly. “You should have told me, Zuri. We could have found a way. A better way.”

“What better way,” snarled Erik. She didn’t answer.

“It doesn’t matter now,” said T’Challa, and turned to Erik. “I’m sorry, N’Jadaka. If we can make this right—”

“Only way we can make this right is with a challenge. I challenge you for the throne.”

There was an outcry from Ramonda and the elders, and Zuri was babbling some nonsense about how Erik shouldn’t take this out on T’Challa, but T’Challa just nodded, something infuriatingly close to pity on his face.

“Very well. You have more than earned that right.”

* * *

He didn’t sleep the night before the challenge. It didn’t matter. He could sleepwalk through all of this by now. He paced the length of his father’s old room instead, and it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t big enough, there was something inside him that wanted to run, or smash the walls or—he wrestled the feeling down. _Save it for the fight_. That was how he’d gotten this far in life. He saved everything for the fight.

“I wish my father had brought you home to us,” said T’Challa before the challenge. It was the last thing he said before Erik killed him. He killed Zuri after, just to shut up his keening sobs.

* * *

In the spirit realm, he ended up back on that wide, dark plain, where the rain had stopped falling. The air was heavy with damp heat, and oppressively still, like the storm that threatened above them would never break. The panthers prowled restively, and Erik couldn’t tell if they were growling, or if that was thunder.

T’Chaka waited for him, nothing kingly in the defeated slump of his shoulders.

“You must stop this, N’Jadaka.”

“I don’t take orders from you. And hey, I’m not the one who’s making time loop around again and again and again.”

T’Chaka nodded. “No. No, I suppose not. But if you are seeking revenge, my children are innocent. Even Zuri—”

“Zuri followed _your_ orders!”

“He wanted to go back for you. I didn’t let him. I feared—I feared it would reveal your father’s treason, and I could not risk that. For a number of political reasons I suspect you will not find sufficient.”

“Too little, too late.”

“I know. I’m only trying—spend your vengeance on me, nephew. Not on our people,” begged T’Chaka.

“Oh, they’re _our_ people now?” Erik sneered. “Fuck you. And this isn’t just about revenge.”

* * *

It wasn’t about revenge. It _wasn’t_.

* * *

That night, he woke up in the small hours to find he could barely move. The Queen Mother was standing over his bed, her white locs unbound, her eyes red and furious from crying, a beautiful nightmare. Erik struggled to get up, to scream for the guards, but he couldn’t make his muscles obey, and all that came out was a thin croak. He wasn’t tied up, he realized. He was paralyzed. Neurotoxin, probably, something like curare. He wouldn’t have long, if so.

“Shhhh,” she said, and sat beside him on the bed. Whatever she’d dosed him with, it worked fast. Already, he couldn’t blink.

“When I was a girl, not yet old enough to hunt, there was a small rabies outbreak in the plains. Before we could contain it, a dozen animals succumbed to the virus. My father was one of the River Tribe’s finest hunters, so he was sent out to track and kill the infected animals. He would bring the carcasses back to be burned, and every time, I cried. ‘Couldn’t we try to save them?’ I would ask. ‘It wasn’t their fault they were infected, that they were hurt.’ And my baba would say, ‘No, it is not their fault, and their deaths are cause for sorrow. But it is our responsibility to ensure they do not hurt others, or spread their illness.’ And so, N’Jadaka, I am sorry. You have killed my son, spreading your pain, and it is not, perhaps, wholly your fault.”

She stroked his forehead, gentle, and he could only barely feel it. Involuntary tears spilled out of his unblinking eyes. He saw where this was going. _Fuck you,_ he wanted to say. _I’m no rabid animal_. But even if his voice were working right now, he’d have had to struggle for the breath to say it.

“But I cannot let you continue. Had my husband just _brought you here in the first place_ …” she said, suddenly vehement, before sucking in a calming breath and continuing, “Well, what’s done is done. I will grieve what you could have been. But I cannot stand by and let you be king, mad with pain as you are.”

Ramonda leaned over to press a kiss to his forehead. “Goodbye, N’Jadaka. May Bast grant you peace,” she said, and closed his eyes.

As the dark closed in, all he could think was _fuck peace. I want justice._

* * *

The next loop, Erik tried something different. He could have tried honing the last couple loops’ approach, since he’d gotten so close, but then he remembered the silent, ashen-faced Dora Milaje and Border Tribe guards encircling him and Shuri. Their wordless endorsement of Shuri’s challenge was just another kind of rebellion Erik couldn’t afford.

He needed to consolidate some power for real before getting the cargo planes in the air. Sending out weapons to the War Dogs was still the end goal; maybe he was thinking too small though, maybe he wasn’t using all of the resources available to him. There were the weapons—which he was sending out—and the vibranium, which wouldn’t do much good on its own, and there was the heart-shaped herb…. That was it. Maybe he didn’t have to destroy the heart-shaped herb. Maybe it was time to share the wealth.

“I think I’m gonna get it right this time,” he told his dad during the now too-familiar trip to the ancestral plane’s version of Oakland.

“I don’t even know what would count as ‘getting it right’ at this point,” said Dad with his head in hands. “Did you speak with your uncle?”

“Yeah, he’s real sorry, and killing you and abandoning me are his biggest regrets, like I give a fuck. Like it _matters_ now.”

“It matters,” whispered his dad, and then Erik was rising from the dirt again.

This time, he didn’t burn the heart-shaped herb.

“Harvest all of that,” he said, gesturing at the garden full of heart-shaped herb plants. “Harvest it, and make more of that juice. The heart-shaped herb ain’t just for the Panther anymore. It’s gonna be for everybody.”

The priests and priestesses babbled their expected denials and excuses.

“Not all of the plants are ready to be harvested—”

“But—that is against—”

“What, the rules?” he interrupted. “And who makes the rules, huh? Aren’t I your king? There are new rules now.”

“Not everyone will survive it,” warned the priestess.

“The strong will.”

* * *

He brought W’Kabi and his warriors to the Hall of Kings, and directed the priests and priestesses to distribute the heart-shaped herb to them. W’Kabi looked nervous as he held the cup full of the dark purple mixture.

“What, you scared?” asked Erik. “Don’t tell me you think this is blasphemous or some shit, like the big cat god’s gonna smite you or whatever.”

W’Kabi smiled thinly. “I suppose I will find out,” he said, then he raised the small cup in a toast, and drank it down.

Groans and gasps filled the dim temple as the power of the heart-shaped herb spread. The ancestors were probably getting a real surprise right about now. Erik grinned, imagining it: all those old fuckers in a tizzy over the slightest disruption to their precious tradition. Tradition, yeah right. More like an excuse to keep up their bullshit _hear no evil, see no evil_ act when it came to the rest of the world. That was all about to change.

The air in the Hall of Kings’ temple was almost too warm now with so many people in the enclosed space, but Erik resisted the desire to wait outside in the open air. He had to see this through, make sure no one pulled some dumb shit. He was so fucking close this time, finally. So he paced as he kept an eye on the priests and priestesses, and the children who he supposed were their acolytes, but none of them tried anything. They all just prayed, or wept quietly, as they waited for the warriors to rise again.

About a third of the Border Tribe warriors didn’t make it. W’Kabi did though, and he looked at his dead tribespeople with an expression of sick horror.

“Wars have casualties,” Erik told him, and surveyed who was left with satisfaction. He knew exactly how few men it could take to bring a nation to its knees. Even two-thirds of W’Kabi’s Border Tribesmen were more than enough. The world thought the Avengers were hot shit? Wait ’til they saw what an entire squad of Wakandan Black Panthers could do. “This’ll do for an army. To start with, anyway. Get ‘em ready, we need to be at Mount Bashenga by tomorrow afternoon.”

He waited, and watched W’Kabi, who had closed his eyes, in prayer or thought or horror, Erik couldn’t tell.

If W’Kabi chickened out now, it’d be inconvenient as hell. But if he followed the order...if he followed the order, he’d be Erik’s for life, in too deep to ever consider turning back.

“Yes, my king,” said W’Kabi, and Erik smiled.

* * *

When it came time for the battle, Erik and his warriors cut through the Dora Milaje and Jabari with ease. With an army like this, Erik thought, it would be easy to build a Wakandan empire. Between the vibranium, the heart-shaped herb, and Wakanda’s advanced technology, nothing could stop him, nothing could stop _them_. This loop was gonna be the one, Erik could feel it. For the first time in more loops than he cared to remember, actual excitement pumped through him along with the adrenaline of battle.

He did a rundown of all his potential failure modes: T’Challa was already out of the picture, he’d made absolutely sure of that this time around. There’d be no miraculous return from a stab to the heart. A rhino had taken M’Baku out, and Okoye was busy taking on W’Kabi. It was just the War Dog Nakia and the princess standing against him now, and they were too late. The cargo planes were already on their way to the War Dog cells all over the world, and Ross wasn’t going to be shooting them down this time, not with the newly super-powered Border Tribesmen about to take him out.

“What did you _do_?” asked Nakia, looking at the battlefield in horror. He just grinned at her.

“No reason for the royal family to be hoarding that herb, is there? Power to the people and all that.”

“You profane what is sacred,” she said, and lifted her blades to fighting position.

“That so? You see your god out here anywhere? I don’t.”

Nakia put up a good fight, like she always did, and Shuri kept blasting at him with those panther paw cannons of hers. They even got some good hits in. But by now, Erik had too much of an advantage in this particular battle, especially when neither of them had managed to get a hold of any heart-shaped herb of their own. He knew how they fought. He knew the herb running through his veins gave him more stamina. He waited for an opening, and one swipe of his claws to Nakia’s femoral artery took her out.

When he faced Shuri, he was tempted to make her pay for the loop when she’d fried him, to draw this out and make her feel some of what he’d felt, burning under that engine. But he was so close to succeeding. No point in jeopardizing everything for the sake of revenge for something that hadn’t even really happened at all, not in this timeline anyway. He just had to make sure she wouldn’t ruin this again, he had to avoid any unnecessary risks.

“Not too late to yield, Princess,” he offered. 

“Never,” she spat.

She fought well, even without the Black Panther suit and the heart-shaped herb. Of course, she wasn’t fighting well enough to actually beat him, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to let her maneuver him anywhere near the cargo plane for a replay of that unfortunate loop. Instead, he drew her out away from the boulders surrounding Mount Bashenga and onto the plains, where she wouldn’t have anything to use against him but the arm cannons whose fire he dodged or absorbed with the suit as necessary. The more he dodged, the wilder her aim got; she was letting her anger get the better of her. Or her grief, he supposed.

He could have told her grief didn’t help you get shit done. Only anger did, if you used it right, if you rode it instead of letting it ride you. But then, when the hell would Shuri have ever learned that lesson, tucked safely away here in Wakanda? He ducked and rolled under one last furious volley of shots, then he got in under her guard, and snapped her neck. Even in the din of battle, the sound was loud, the way the sound of a grenade’s pin dropping or the sound of a gun being cocked was somehow always loud.

Shuri dropped to the ground like a broken doll, and something about the sight seemed obscene. The fear frozen on her carefully painted face made her look even younger than the teenager she was, and Erik couldn’t look away. She wasn’t so far off from being a little girl. Gangly still, like she’d only just come out of her last growth spurt. _Fuck_. Nausea rose up in him in a dizzying, sickening rush.

_Get it the fuck together, Stevens, you’ve done this before._

He’d killed Shuri before, in enough loops that he’d lost count. He’d killed other kids like her too, kids who’d probably been even younger than her. Orders he’d given and orders he’d followed had killed kids: child soldiers and the cannon fodder terrorists sometimes liked to use to fuck with them, and even civilian casualties, the collateral damage of JSOC ops and drone strikes made on bad intel. There were going to be a hell of a lot more dead kids by the time Erik was through with this war.

Erik wasn’t a fan of killing kids.

But then, it wasn’t like Nat Turner had been either, and he’d still known it was necessary to take back his and his people’s freedom. This was just what had to be done. 

It was a more merciful death than Shuri deserved anyway, given that death by broiling she’d given him one loop back, Erik told himself. And she’d have killed him just now if she could have.

He still ended up heaving his guts out behind a boulder.

* * *

When the battle was over, Agent Ross saw which way the wind was blowing, and came out of the mountain to meet Erik. He barely flinched when he saw the destruction on the battlefield.

“Congratulations, your highness,” he said, like he hadn’t just tried to shoot down Erik’s cargo planes and been dragged out by the Border Tribe warriors. “As a, uh, representative of the United States gov—”

Erik sent a knife through his throat. He didn’t do any of this to become a fucking CIA-backed dictator like all the rest.

* * *

The cargo planes went out. The orders were sent to the War Dogs, and for those who refused, Border Tribe warriors were sent after them. Erik could see it all unrolling in front of him: the oppressed overthrowing the powerful, the collapse of empires built on the backs of slaves, Wakanda’s empire ascendant, unbeatable. There’d be a lot of bloodshed, yeah, but it’d be worth it. It would be justice, _retribution_ , the only reparations that mattered for centuries of oppression and slavery. It would be a better world, eventually, even if Erik wouldn’t live to see it.

“This is the revolution,” he said when he was back on the throne, looking out at the gathered council and guards, the priests and priestesses. “This is the beginning of a new empire, a _better_ empire than our world has ever seen. ‘Cause _we’re_ gonna be the ones running it for once.”

The faces looking at him were all grim and ashen, eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. And alright, that was fair. Victory hadn’t come easy. Rebellion, revolution, they were bought with blood. Wakanda had lived too long in isolated luxury if they didn’t know that. They’d learn.

“What a cost we have paid for it,” rasped one of the council elders. “What a cost we will pay for it still. This is not Wakanda anymore.”

The other council elders murmured their assent, shaking their heads and weeping silently.

“Wakanda is what I say it is,” snapped Erik. “We gonna have a new kind of Wakanda now. No more hiding, no more turning our backs on the world! We’re going out to take the world _back_!”

He dismissed everybody from the throne room, then he assigned guards to keep a watch on the Queen Mother, and to guard the council elders. Nothing else would happen tonight, and it would take time, still, to get the War Dog cells in place for the right coups, to get the weapons where they needed to go. They could take stock the next day, and then the work would begin in earnest. Erik looked forward to it: a new day. Fucking _finally_.

The sun set. Erik waited and watched at the sand tables and holographic displays of the palace’s war room, until the cargo planes all arrived at their destinations, and then he stayed up later even than that, checking the Golden City’s defenses and its stock of available weapons. He kept an eye on all the security feeds available to him too, wary of another assassination attempt.

If he could just get through tonight, if he could just finally reach the fifth day—eventually, he couldn’t hold off his exhaustion any longer. The long day and the battle were taking their toll. If he waited any longer, his body would make the choice for him and he’d pass out wherever. He had to sleep, even if—no. He wouldn’t even fucking let himself think it. It’d be fine. It had to be fine. He’d succeeded, hadn’t he? The loop wouldn’t reset again, not now that he’d made it through alive, not when he’d finally, _finally_ gotten it entirely right.

He still had to survive the night though, he supposed.

So he posted guards outside his quarters, different from the guards who’d let his aunt through to kill him that one time. He set some booby traps too, noisy ones, so that if someone did break in to try to kill him, he’d wake up. Only after all that did he finally give in to exhaustion and go to sleep, ready to wake up to a new world, a world he’d made.

He woke up in Busan again.


	2. Chapter 2

“No. No no no no no no _no_.”

He stumbled out of the bed, looked around wildly. This wasn’t the palace. Fuck, it wasn’t the _palace_ , it was supposed to be the palace, for once he was supposed to have made it to the fifth fucking day. He pinched himself, like an idiot, hoping against hope that this was a nightmare. But the sting was real, and Linda, sitting up with sleepy eyes and messy hair, she was real too.

“Erik? Baby, what is it?” Linda turned, grabbed her phone and squinted at the screen. “Klaue’s tracker is fine, we got time.” She turned back to him, more awake now, and whatever she saw in his face made her eyes widen. “ _Oh_. C’mere, it was just a nightmare. You’re okay, it’s okay. It’s early still, come back to bed.”

Her voice was gentle and sweet, the way you talked to a hurt animal. She beckoned to him, held out a hand that trembled, just a little, and for a split-second, he was tempted. What a nice lie that would be: _it was just a nightmare_. One long, long nightmare.

But he’d _won_. He’d finally won, he’d finally succeeded, he’d even made it through the fourth night alive, he was sure he had, but here he was, right back at the beginning again. Time rolling back, again and again, a boulder he couldn’t roll over the hill, a boulder that was just gonna keep crushing him.

He had to get out of here.

He threw on some clothes, and ran out of the hotel room, heedless of Linda calling after him.

* * *

The streets of Busan didn’t have any answers. He walked and walked, and went over and over the last loop, trying to figure out where the hell he’d gone wrong. There were too many variables though, too many unknowns. This wasn’t like a training exercise, where the mission brief was clear, where there was a debrief at the end to break down what his unit had gotten right and what they’d fucked up.

 _Maybe this is just what hell is_ , Erik thought. No fire and brimstone, no demonic tortures, just endless repetition, endless failure, again and again.

Fuck that. Erik hadn’t failed at a single goddamn thing he’d ever put his mind to, not even when every single one of the odds was stacked against him. He wasn’t going to fail now. He’d try the plan again, make absolutely sure he stayed alive through the fourth night. Maybe that was what had gone wrong, maybe someone had made it through his traps and taken him out while he was sleeping.

Yeah, that was it, that must have been what happened. Like when the queen mother had poisoned him in his bed, only this time he hadn’t even woken up to see his attacker. His breathing slowed, and the calm of having a problem to solve washed over him. That had to be it. If he just kept his cool, he could deal with that failure mode too.

* * *

He did it all over again, step by step, exactly the same. Almost exactly the same, anyway. Seeing his dad went different every time.

“So you didn’t get it right.”

“I’m gonna,” insisted Erik, and winced when he realized it came out in a child’s voice. Fucking ancestral plane bullshit. He focused until he was an adult again. “Did you see—can you tell if I got killed on that fourth night? Maybe that’s why—”

His dad shook his head, frowning. “I did not see that far. I will watch this time,” he said, and as if in response, the apartment’s TV blinked on with the fizzing snap of an old CRT display. It showed the temple, the priests and priestesses kneeling at the sand pit where Erik’s body was buried right now. The image was more crisp and clear than any old TV had ever managed.

“You always got a high-def feed of my life?” asked Erik. Shit, he hoped not.

“No, it usually does not work so well,” murmured his dad. “Certainly I have been unable to choose what I see.”

“So who’s choosing?” he asked, unsettled, but before his dad could answer, Erik was pulled back to his body in the temple.

This time, when he got to the fourth night, he snuck out of the quarters he’d taken in the Citadel. No one could kill him in the night if they couldn’t find him. He crept through the dark halls and headed down and down, to the oldest levels of the Citadel, down until he was at the base of the ancient pyramid the Citadel was built around. Down here, the rooms were small and mostly bare, and the air was still and heavy. It looked like these old rooms had become storage over the years, full of pallets and boxes and rolled up tapestries.

A childish impulse to explore and snoop around tugged at him, but he was too tired to indulge it. Tomorrow, maybe. If tomorrow came. He picked the first room he found that had some rolled up rugs that would make do for a bedroll, set a tripwire hooked up to a flashbang, then went to sleep.

And woke up in Busan again.

* * *

 _Don’t panic, keep it together, Stevens_ , he told himself. He just had to go through the loop again, ask his dad what had happened. Maybe someone had found him in the storage room. Hell, maybe the air was bad down so low in the Citadel, maybe he’d accidentally given himself carbon monoxide poisoning or something.

It was honestly boring as hell by now, but he did it all over again, exactly the same, until he got back to his dad.

“So what the hell happened?” he asked.

His dad spread his hands and shrugged. “Nothing. You were asleep, that was all. I watched the whole night, and—”

“No,” Erik interrupted. “No! Something has to have happened—”

“Nothing happened,” insisted his dad. “No one else entered the room, I saw you breathing, you were fine.”

“Then _why_ the _fuck_ —” The TV turned on, and both of them whirled to face it. “Did you do that?” Erik demanded.

“No, I didn’t.”

The TV showed the temple at first, then the screen flickered and wavered, like a VHS being rewound, until it showed Erik sleeping in the storage room. The video went forward, as if sped up, and Erik watched himself sleep in fast forward, his chest clearly rising and falling, his body tossing and turning every so often. No intruders or assassins came into the room to smother him, there was no bullet in the night, no drone sent in to kill him. Just Erik, alone and alive.

“What the _fuck_. I _won_ , I was king! I got through the four days, and I’m still fucking stuck?!”

It didn’t make sense. Nothing about any of this made sense, but he’d thought there had to at least be a reason, a purpose, to reliving the same four days over and over again, especially if he was the only living person who seemed to know time kept repeating. If his own personal Groundhog Day wasn’t about getting the girl, it had to be about getting the throne, right?

The TV turned to static, only the sound coming from the speakers wasn’t the familiar hiss and crackle of white noise: instead a rumbling growl spilled out from the tinny speakers, and it sounded too real and too close.

“Whatever this is, it is not a game to be won,” said his dad.

“Then what is it! Why the fuck is this even happening? When will it _stop_?!”

“I don’t know,” his dad admitted. “But I think you have been quite firmly shown that it will not stop if you go on as you have been, killing and conquering.”

* * *

He went through the rest of the loop on autopilot, _killing and conquering_ , because fuck his dad and fuck this time loop, that was how to _win_ , that was the only way to achieve anything worthwhile. But the loop started again, right back in Busan.

Erik stared up at the hotel room ceiling and thought about trying it all again, about maybe making an effort to reduce the collateral damage, or even trying a new plan altogether. Maybe if he got the Dora Milaje on his side…? His plans all stalled out, his brain like an engine that just wouldn’t turn over. What did it matter if he came up with a new plan? He’d thought he had won, but maybe he was playing the wrong game. If so, for the first time in years, he didn’t even fucking know what game he was playing, what the rules were, how to beat it.

He slid out of bed, careful and slow, so as not to wake Linda, threw on some clothes and grabbed a gun, and left.

* * *

Erik went to T’Challa. It was early enough still that T’Challa and the others weren’t at the CIA station yet, so Erik intercepted them in the lobby of their own hotel. He’d been through more than enough loops to be able to pin their schedule down to the second, and he knew he only had about three minutes before Ross came to pick them up. Long enough. Maybe he’d get a spear to the throat for this, but whatever, it wasn’t like it even mattered.

He’d been in the lobby just long enough to start getting suspicious looks and the attention of a security guard, when T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia walked out of the elevator. They all spotted him pretty quickly: they didn’t know who the hell he was, not yet, but Black folks stood out in ritzy Busan hotels, so Erik walked forward to greet them as if they were expecting him.

“Hey, can we talk for a sec?”

Okoye and Nakia stepped in front of T’Challa. “And who are you?” asked Okoye.

Erik took off the chain that held his dad’s ring, and held it out for their inspection. To drive the point home more, he answered them in Xhosa.

“N’Jadaka, son of N’Jobu. Wanted to have a quick word with my cousin here.”

* * *

The hotel had an attached restaurant that was serving brunch, and Okoye directed them there while Nakia went to meet Ross.

“You mind if I order a pitcher of mimosas? I could do with a pitcher of mimosas,” Erik said, and flagged down a waiter.

“I did not know my uncle N’Jobu had a son,” said T’Challa slowly. He stared at Erik with a frown on his face, his eyes intent like he was looking for a familial resemblance.

“Yeah, I figured you didn’t,” Erik said, and gave him the short version of the story, no murder included. If he dropped the _your dad’s a murderer_ bombshell on T’Challa right now, he’d probably just make a scene, storm off. Erik wasn’t interested in that soap opera, family drama shit right now.

“We will need DNA confirmation,” said Okoye, once he was done.

The mimosas arrived. Erik directed the waiter to fill his champagne flute to the brim, then tossed it back in one long swallow. When he set it back down, the waiter refilled the flute to the brim again. Shit, Erik oughta leave the guy a big tip for that.

“Sure thing. I got this too though,” he said, and showed them the War Dog tattoo. Okoye took that in with a sharp intake of breath. She and T’Challa exchanged a loaded glance that Erik couldn’t read.

“Cousin, you are welcome in Wakanda. I am only sorry it has taken so long for us to meet,” said T’Challa, and he was a good enough diplomat that it sounded sincere. “We have some business here in Busan, but once it is concluded, you are welcome to join us.”

Okoye didn’t bother with any polite, diplomatic sincerity. “How did you know we would be here?” she asked.

Erik grinned at her. It was the smart question to ask. Not that he intended to answer it honestly.

“Coincidence. Saw that mess y’all made last night, thought I might as well introduce myself. Little family reunion, you know? But mostly, I just have one question.”

Erik recognized the signs of tension in T’Challa by now. He always gave it away in his hands and shoulders, in his watchful eyes. Here, before Erik had made any moves against him, before T’Challa had a chance to ask anyone else about him or look him up, the tension was more confused than it was angry, but it was still there when T’Challa nodded.

“Go ahead.”

“If you were stuck in the same day, or the same few days, living them over and over again, what would you do?”

“Like…the film Groundhog Day?”

“Yeah.”

Okoye stared at him incredulously, and T’Challa looked surprised, but also like he was ready to take the question seriously, at least a little.

“It would depend on the day.”

“Saw you had a rough couple days the other week. How about those days.”

T’Challa nodded, almost as if to himself. Even his grief looked dignified.

“I would figure out how to save my father, tell him all the things I wish I would have told him. I would save those who died in the bombing at the UN.” T’Challa winced now, his forehead wrinkling with obvious regret. “I would...not rush to judgment and in so doing harm an innocent man, I would make sure the true terrorist was brought to justice before he could hurt more people.”

Well that was all annoyingly fucking wholesome. Why hadn’t _T’Challa_ gotten the chance to do all that with his own personal time loop?

“Nice. Real fairy tale prince shit. What if none of that worked.”

“Excuse me?”

“What if you do all that, fix all of it, and none of it works? What if you’re still just fucking stuck. Because cuz, I am fucking stuck. Same four days, over and over.”

“Oh, I see. You are mad, and you are wasting our time.” Okoye rose from the table, one of her hands hovering by her pocket where her spear was probably hidden, her other hand on T’Challa’s arm. “My king, we must go.”

“I ain’t crazy, General.” He could prove it, he knew he could, but just the thought of trying was exhausting. He drained his mimosa, then tipped the champagne flute towards T’Challa in a belated toast. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. See you some other loop,” he said, and got up to go.

Before he could leave, T’Challa grabbed hold of his arm. “Wait. Come home with us. Come back to Wakanda.”

“To do what? Meet the family?”

“Yes. And see your homeland. If you want, that is. Perhaps you will feel less...stuck, that way.”

Did T’Challa think he meant it metaphorically? That was cute. And the idea was tempting, if only for the novelty. It would be the path of least resistance, the easiest thing to do: let T’Challa have Klaue, let him take Erik back with him too, be welcomed as a long-lost prince. But it was too late for that. Klaue would blow his cover. Unless…

“Yeah, a’ight. Sure.”

“My king—” hissed Okoye.

“He is family, isn’t he? Wakandan at the very least. Wakanda does not abandon its own.”

Erik nearly laughed then and there. He was walking proof that Wakanda did, and that they abandoned more besides that. But he’d take things easy this loop, see where that got him.

“Of course, my king,” Okoye conceded. She kept a suspicious glare trained on Erik. “Return to the hotel lobby at five, hopefully our business will be concluded by then. We _will_ be testing your DNA.”

* * *

He met T’Challa and the others back at the hotel, after he’d taken care of Klaue. Nakia looked troubled, but T’Challa and Okoye seemed satisfied. When T’Challa introduced him to Nakia, she looked more troubled still. Did she know he’d killed Klaue? Did she suspect?

“How’d it go?” Erik asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Your business, how’d it go?”

“There were some complications,” answered T’Challa, with a quick glance at Okoye and Nakia. “But it ended satisfactorily. We return to Wakanda tonight. You still wish to come with us, I hope.”

“Yeah, of course.”

* * *

He faked his way through the expected reactions to the Royal Talon jet, to seeing Wakanda and the Golden City for the first time. The real first time he’d seen them felt like a long time ago, now. He dragged up a piece of that old wonder, tried for something like the shining love he’d seen in his dad’s eyes.

“What did your father tell you of Wakanda?” asked Nakia, watching him carefully.

“I was just a kid when he died. He made it sound like a fairy tale.”

T’Challa smiled at him kindly. “Maybe it is a fairy tale, at that. You are a lost prince returning, are you not?”

* * *

When they got to the Citadel, the Dora Milaje took him to a guest room in the palace, and Okoye took a cheek swab.

“I hope, for your sake, that you have not lied to us,” she said.

He gave her a toothy grin, and didn’t answer.

A couple hours later, she returned. “Prince N’Jadaka,” she said, giving him the Wakandan salute. “The King and the Council will see you tomorrow.”

* * *

Unlike just about every other loop, meeting the Council wasn’t tense and hostile this time, it was just awkward. He gave half-true answers to the Council’s and T’Challa’s questions: his father had been killed in Oakland, the killer had never been caught, and Erik had grown up in Oakland, happy to remain in America and not seek out his Wakandan heritage. Okoye watched carefully and stayed silent, which probably meant he wasn’t telling her anything her own intel hadn’t already told her. The Council grumbled things like _how could this have happened_ and _why was N’Jobu never found_ , and _how could we not know of his child_ , and Erik just shrugged and pretended he didn’t know the answers.

“He was just a child, why should he know of such things?” said T’Challa. “Perhaps your mother…?”

“My ma’s dead. She wanted me raised in Oakland by her folks,” he said, stretching the truth almost past the breaking point.

“Of course,” said T’Challa, eyes kind. He had to give T’Challa some credit though, because T’Challa let him know that he’d done his own digging into Erik’s background. “Okoye tells me you served in the United States Navy, in an elite unit?”

He nodded and told them how he’d ended up with the SEALs: that he’d gone to Annapolis, then MIT before qualifying for the SEALs and serving with the Joint Special Operations Command. If T’Challa knew what that meant about Erik’s skills and capabilities, he didn’t let on. The queen mother started relaxing the moment he started talking about MIT, and Erik felt the usual twist of bitter pride. MIT was always the signal that he wasn’t just some thug from the hood. Cal State East Bay just didn’t get the same response.

“So you have made something of yourself. Good,” she said with a nod.

“Oh yeah, I’m no thug, Auntie,” he said with a smile, and watched with perverse satisfaction as everyone shifted uncomfortably.

“You are welcome in Wakanda, cousin,” pronounced T’Challa, ending the awkward pause. “I only regret it took so long for you to return home.”

* * *

He spent the next three days being shown around the Citadel and Wakanda. Everyone but T’Challa kept things polite and distant, like Erik was some foreign official they didn’t want to offend, but also didn’t actually like. Even when Erik tried to speak Xhosa, everyone else stuck to English, and he knew it wasn’t because his Xhosa was so bad as all that. It was a not-so-subtle reminder: _you are an outsider_. Or maybe they were just suspicious of him, which yeah, okay, fair enough. He was trying on a sheep’s clothes for size, for once, and they didn’t fit right, they burst at the seams to show what he really was, and Nakia and Okoye noticed it, kept a wary eye on him.

T’Challa didn’t notice, or if he did, he pretended like it didn’t matter. He was the most welcoming of anyone, constantly patting Erik on the shoulder and reeling him in for sideways hugs and smiling at him. Erik looked for the lie in his smiles, and didn’t find it. He tensed every time T’Challa touched him, ready to reject any possessive and patronizing edge to the touches, ready to fight, but Erik couldn’t decipher anything from T’Challa’s casual affection other than brotherly enthusiasm.

T’Challa had dinner with him every night too, and kept apologizing about not being able to spend more time with him.

“There is so much to do, with my father’s death, and—anyway, I am sorry to leave you on your own so much. Next week, we can…”

Erik doubted there’d be a next week. But maybe…if this ended the loop, it wouldn’t be so bad. Erik could try taking it slow, could build up some trust and some allies, maybe even do it the way his dad had, working as a War Dog, only Erik would do it smarter, bigger. Same goal, different path. Yeah, that could be okay. Maybe it was better, even.

The fourth night, T’Challa promised to take him to the Hall of Kings to meet Zuri. Zuri had to be sweating bullets by now, anticipating what was coming, the possibility of all of his and T’Chaka’s lies coming home to roost, but hell, maybe he’d play dumb, and maybe Erik would too, maybe he’d just conceal and sharpen the knowledge of N’Jobu’s murder like a shiv to use at the right time.

He went to sleep on the fourth night feeling like he’d gotten it right. No killing and conquering, except for Klaue, and that had to be okay, right? Whatever power or entity that had turned the TV on in the ancestral plane couldn’t disapprove of that. Klaue was a thief and a murderer, for no reason other than his own gratification, wanted by Wakanda for decades. So maybe…

He woke up in Busan. Again.

* * *

He tried a few more times, because maybe there were variables he could tweak, maybe he could get it perfect. _Dial back the crazy and the sass, Stevens_ , he told himself, and it sounded an awful lot like his second social worker’s voice, a weary Black woman who’d tended to treat twelve year old Erik like a mini-adult, because compared to some of her other cases, he’d been downright easy. _You’re a smart kid, Erik, you know how the game’s played. Just try, okay?_ So he tried. He tried being on his best behavior in Wakanda, the way he used to be in the first few weeks with a new foster family. That went about as well as it ever had, or even worse. He was out of practice at it, he realized. He was about two tours of duty and a hell of a lot of scarring too late to ever pass as sweet and harmless again, after all.

“Your war was hard, wasn’t it,” said T’Challa one loop, after Erik answered Nakia’s questions about his time as a SEAL with the bare minimum of detail.

“It was fine,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just classified, is all.”

What the hell did T’Challa know about war, anyway.

When his best company manners didn’t work, Erik even tried not killing Klaue, instead sticking to wounding him and blowing out the tires on the van to stop his getaway. A whole loop with no body count, no collateral damage except for a slightly blown up CIA station. That loop went okay, at first, but it just ended in Erik spending days three and four locked in his dad’s old suite in the palace when Klaue snitched on him to the Wakandans. It turned out that Nakia was a pretty damned good interrogator. Not that she believed him when he told her the truth.

“Listen, I’m just trying to break out of a time loop, alright?” he finally said, after hour five of an admittedly skillful interrogation.

Nakia was good at tripping him up, drawing out little details, and returning to inconsistencies long after he’d let them slip, so that he’d almost forgotten them by the time she came back around to them. That he’d let any inconsistencies slip at all wasn’t good. He was losing track of what had happened when, what he’d done during this loop or during another, what he should know and shouldn’t. And he had no idea how many loops it had even been, his constantly resetting body’s conception of time wholly out of sync with his mind’s. Had it been a year of these loops yet? He didn’t know, couldn’t even hope to guess.

So fuck it. Why not tell her the truth?

“A time loop.”

He nodded. “Same four days, over and over. It’s getting boring as fuck.” He mentally ran through what this loop was like for the people living it the first—and to their minds only—time, then squinted at Nakia, aggrieved. “I ain’t even done anything that bad this time, sis. Recovered your stolen property, and brought you a wanted terrorist. A thank you would be nice.”

Nakia studied him for a long time. Erik tried to return the favor, it wasn’t like she was hard on the eyes with her glowing dark skin and shining eyes. Those eyes went as deep and unknowable as a mineshaft though, and it was a struggle to sit still under her appraisal. Before too long, he found that he couldn’t keep meeting her eyes, scared of what she’d see in his own. Eventually, the soft curves of her lovely face settled into a hard kind of compassion, and a memory stirred: one of his mom’s old friends, who’d gotten out of prison when Erik’s mom hadn’t. The tough love she’d dredged up for Erik. _She loved you something crazy, boy. Said you was so smart. Don’t fuck that up._

“You are…unwell, I think,” Nakia said eventually, and rose to leave.

“I’m fine.”

“A healer will see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, sure. Tomorrow.” He sagged back against his chair. That unreachable fifth day.

Just like every other fucking time, he woke up in Busan again.

He didn’t know how to get this right. He didn’t know what the hell to _do_.

The knowledge sat heavy on his chest and in his throat. He’d won and he’d lost, he’d died and he’d lived, he’d taken lives and spared them, and none of it was right, all of it put him right back here. For the first time in years, he didn’t have a plan. He turned and shoved his face into the pillow, let it swallow up the keening sound that came out of him.

He was so fucking _tired_ of this shit.

* * *

He left Linda in the hotel room, and headed for T’Challa’s hotel to book a room there. He sullenly contemplated assassinating T’Challa here and now, but couldn’t work up the energy. Instead he just ordered everything that looked good on the room service menu—motherfucker, one burger cost $50 goddamned dollars, rich people were crazy—and he ordered Groundhog Day on the hotel’s fancy TV set up, then proceeded to watch it over and over again.

After the first bottle of $500 wine, this seemed like a hilariously recursive activity. After the second, he kind of wondered if doing this could actually make the time loop worse somehow, like he was introducing an even more fatal error into the fabric of the universe. Maybe this was how the universe ended, the loop just the first in a series of cascading errors that would lead to an existence-wide _ERROR_ message.

He wasn’t fucking drunk enough for thoughts like that.

He fell asleep at some point, and when he woke up, Groundhog Day was still playing. It was Phil’s final loop, the one where he went around the town like some kinda guardian angel. Was this what Erik was supposed to do? Fix the life of every fucking person he ran across during these four days? _Was_ he even supposed to do anything, or was this just a shitty thing happening to him? His own natural, temporal disaster: devastating, but as impersonal and unbeatable as a tsunami. Maybe he was just going to live forever in this glitch in the universe. If that wasn’t literally hell, it was functionally indistinguishable from it.

Bill Murray didn’t look like he thought this was hell. He looked sad and happy all at once, a holy kind of peace on his face.

Peace. Like such a thing could even exist for people like him. Erik could live this loop five hundred times over and still not find peace. He threw an empty bottle of wine at the TV and the screen cracked.

Erik fumbled around the wreckage of the hotel room for his laptop, and he looked up internet theories about Groundhog Day. Buddhists thought it was about transcendence and reincarnation, Christians thought it was about purgatory, Jews thought it was about performing good deeds... _well fuck you too, film critics._ Erik was trying to perform the ultimate good deed of overthrowing oppressive white supremacy and look where that had gotten him.

And as for enlightenment...according to Buddhist doctrine, it took 10,000 years for a soul to evolve to its next level. _I’m not a fucking Buddhist though, am I? So why the fuck should I be waiting 10,000 years for a spiritual evolution I don’t even believe in?_

He threw the laptop at the TV screen too.

* * *

“I don’t want to do this,” he told Linda on the next loop, then he grabbed his shit, and left. She followed him into the hallway, of course.

“Erik, what the hell, what’s going on?”

“Get the diamonds back yourself if you want ‘em. I’m out.”

The elevator doors closed on Linda’s baffled face. She didn’t follow him. He wondered, vaguely, why not. She’d followed him this far, after all. Didn’t matter though. Nothing really did. He got a cab to the airport and bought a ticket for the next flight to Oakland.

“Will that be one-way, or round trip, sir?” asked the ticket agent.

“One-way.”

It was a long-ass flight, with an added layover in Honolulu, and the travel time ate up pretty much one whole day and night of his loop. He only had a couple hours in Honolulu and he spent the whole time in and around the airport. He could see Hawaii’s lush tropical greenery in just about every corner, but it only served as an unpleasant reminder of Wakanda’s jungles. The heat here was more damp than in the Golden City though, sticky and pervasive even inside the airport. It made his skin itch, made him suddenly desperate for the cool breeze off the Bay. When it was time to board his flight, he got on the plane to Oakland eagerly, and it was only when his flight landed in Oakland the morning after he left Busan that he realized: he wasn’t even sure why he’d come back to Oakland at all.

There wasn’t anything for him here. It wasn’t home. He’d come back once after graduating from the Naval Academy, out of some vague sense of gratitude for the teachers and foster parents and social workers who’d helped make it possible for him to graduate from the Academy at all. He hadn’t been back since.

He was faintly surprised to find out he could take BART straight from the airport now, and he followed the signs to the new station on autopilot, only to find himself staring blankly at one of the station maps when he got there. Tourists and travelers jostled him and chattered around him, in at least three different languages, all of them trying to plot their routes into the city, because of course they were going to San Francisco. No amount of gentrification was gonna make Oakland the same kind of tourist destination.

He was no tourist, so the stop names were all familiar, of course, almost every one of them holding onto some memory or another, good or bad or indifferent. The memories all felt like they were from another lifetime now, though. He traced along the scuffed up glass covering the map, his finger following the blue and green lines up to West Oakland, hearing the very faint echo of his mama’s voice: _this is our stop, baby boy, West Oakland, see? Can you read that with me? West Oakland. Last stop before you cross the Bay. If you ever get lost, just find a grown up and ask them how to get here, okay?_

When he was real little, and the train wasn’t too crowded, he’d sit on her lap or stand on the seat closest to the BART map, pointing at each stop. _What’s this one? Where’s this? Can we go here?_ And she’d laugh and answer him, and promise to take him to each and every single stop.

Of course, then she’d told him the train went under the Bay to get to the city, and he’d flat out refused to go. The Loma Prieta earthquake had made a pretty indelible impression on Erik as a kid, and he’d developed a terror of being stuck on the train during an earthquake, especially while it was underwater in the transbay tube. Dad had turned that into an engineering lesson, he remembered suddenly. It was part of why Erik had ended up studying engineering.

 _Engineers worked very hard to make sure it’s safe, Erik. Even if there is an earthquake, it will be alright. It was fine during the last earthquake, wasn’t it? It’ll be fine during the next. And anyway, there are no fault lines directly under it, the Hayward fault is all the way over in_ —

_Joe! Plate tectonics lesson later!_

There was one stop that would always mean home to some small part of Erik. His finger came to rest on the West Oakland stop on the BART map.

 _If you ever get lost_ …

He turned away from the map and went to the ticket machine to buy a ticket, loading up just enough money for a one-way trip to West Oakland, then he went through the turnstile and ran up the stairs to catch the train he could already hear screeching along the elevated tracks.

 _This is a Daly City bound train, headed to Daly City_ , droned the announcer as the train doors closed, and Erik counted down the stops to West Oakland, the old habit returning as if he’d never left Oakland at all.

* * *

When he got off the train, he let muscle memory take over, his feet sure of their path towards the Corns, his pace steady, even though the rest of him was busy looking around and cataloging the changes. And shit, there were plenty of those. There was a fucking grocery co-op now, like this was Berkeley instead of Oakland. There was a 99 Cent store too though, so maybe the neighborhood hadn’t been entirely colonized by tech workers fleeing San Francisco’s insanely high rents. He figured it was only a matter of time though.

He wished he could take some grim satisfaction in even the projects becoming desirable real estate, but mostly it just pissed him off. It’d be one thing if all the improvements were meant for the community that actually lived here, that belonged here. Instead Erik was pretty sure the blocky, mixed residential-commercial units surrounding the BART station were meant to scream _this is a safe and thriving and soon to be white community!_ to all the gentrifiers. He left the clean new buildings behind and headed towards what he hoped would be more familiar territory.

It only took a couple of blocks for the cars parked along the sides of the streets to start looking older and more beat up. Priuses were replaced with Corollas that hadn’t been new even when Erik was a kid. The western skyline towards the Bay became more and more industrial, cranes peeking out from behind the trees and warehouses. When graffiti made its reappearance along the fences and warehouses lining the sidewalks, some part of Erik relaxed. This was his familiar Oakland. Not everything had changed.

Sooner than he expected, he was standing in front of the projects where he’d lived with his dad. The high rise tower was still mostly the same: the same joyless profile, the same basketball court. They’d slapped a new coat of paint on the tower at some point, and there was some more greenery and landscaping scattered around, probably the result of some community initiative to make the place seem less grim and institutional. There was even a brightly-colored playground now, clearly hard used, but clean enough, and currently occupied by shouting toddlers instead of passed out crackheads.

He doubted things were especially better for the residents of projects like this, not when a few BART stops away, the police could shoot Oscar Grant for nothing, not when half the Black men in these projects would end up arrested at least once. But someone could at least look at this tower and think _it’s not so bad, things are getting better_. A pleasant and poisonous lie. Things wouldn’t get better for anyone here unless they got the hell out. Things wouldn’t get better without a goddamned revolution.

He paced the perimeter of the high-rise, earning himself some suspicious looks from residents, but he wasn’t ready to leave yet.

Erik walked and walked, and waited to feel anything else, any connection. All that came was a dizzy sort of strangeness. Lately he’d spent more time in the spirit realm’s version of this place, and now it was the real thing that looked odd and unsettling by comparison, simultaneously more and less familiar than its unearthly counterpart. The version of this place with a ghost rattling around in it meant more to him now than this one ever had, or would. This building in front of him right now was just his childhood’s grave. T’Chaka and Zuri had made sure of that. Erik took one last look at the building, then he turned and walked away.

He wandered, no real destination in mind. As the afternoon crept on, the streets and sidewalks grew more crowded. It was only when he was swallowed up by a crowd of noisy, jostling kids that he realized he’d ended up in front of his old high school.

There were probably still some plaques and trophies with his name on them in there. Erik Stevens had been a model high school student, the pride of his teachers, an unqualified success story: the only student in the school’s history to get a rare, highly competitive acceptance to the US Naval Academy. The word _inspiring_ had been thrown around a lot. There’d even been a patronizing newspaper article, some bullshit about a disadvantaged young orphan pulling himself up by his bootstraps to get to the Naval Academy. Erik would bet a big chunk of change that his example got trotted out for years afterwards: _Erik Stevens made it to the Naval Academy, and he was an orphan. You can at least get your ass to Cal State East Bay_.

He wondered what his teachers would think now. He wondered what they would say, if he showed them his scars and told them what they meant. He didn’t have to just wonder though. He could find out.

He walked against the flow of students leaving the school and slipped through the open doors past a huddle of laughing teenagers. On the way to Admin, he was stopped by a cop.

“Excuse me, sir, do you have a visitor pass?”

“What, I don’t look like a student?” he tried joking, but the cop wasn’t amused. And fuck, cops in a school, what kinda school-to-prison pipeline bullshit was that.

“You can’t just wander around, sir, I need you to go to the administration office and get a visitor pass, otherwise I’ll have to escort you off the premises.”

“Yeah, sure, of course. Sorry, I’m an alumni, I was just in the neighborhood. Wanted to see if any of my old teachers are still here, catch up, you know?”

The cop didn’t seem to be reassured by this, and walked him all the way to Admin, where Erik put on his best officer and a gentleman act and charmed the receptionist into both issuing him a pass, and telling him that of his old teachers, only Mrs. Chapman was still around. She’d been his English teacher during his senior year, the one who’d helped him with all his college application essays and letters of recommendation. She’d cried with joy when he got his acceptance to the Academy, and she’d cried as she handed him his diploma. Erik figured she’d probably cried when she got his handful of letters to her too.

When he got to her classroom, her door was open, and he watched her from the doorway for a long moment. She was with a student, going over some homework or essay, a familiar scene. Erik had been that student often enough, held back after class so Mrs. C could go over his essays with him, showing him what he could improve. Judging by this kid’s attentive lean towards Mrs. C and his shy glances at her, he was following in Erik’s footsteps. Looking for any scrap of praise, happy to get attention. Erik knew he’d been that young, once, but forget about the past being a foreign country; Erik could do foreign countries easy. The past was another goddamn planet if it looked like this kid.

Erik shifted his attention to Mrs. C. She hadn’t been a young woman when she’d been his teacher, but he’d never thought of her as old. She was old now. Her once-black hair had turned silver, though she still kept it in the same immaculate short twists, and her light brown skin had thinned and gained new, deep wrinkles. Good wrinkles, Erik thought: the ones around the eyes and mouth that came from happiness. Mrs. C had always loved her work. She’d have to, to stick it out this long in a West Oakland high school.

When Mrs. C handed the paper back to the kid, Erik knocked on the door frame. “Hey, Mrs. C. Remember me?”

He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to recognize him or not. But after peering at him for only a few short seconds, she gasped and opened her arms. “Erik Stevens, is that you? Come here!”

Before he knew it, he’d stepped into the room and she was engulfing him in a hug, and he returned it carefully. She wasn’t a small woman, but Erik was out of practice when it came to hugging nice old ladies, if he had ever been in practice at all. Mrs. C sure wasn’t bothering to be careful; she was squeezing him tight, and yup, starting to cry.

Tears or no tears, she was still beaming when she let him go. “Look at you! How long’s it been? What are you doing back here?”

“Been a minute, yeah,” he said. “I’m just visiting.”

“Are you out of the Navy, honey? Tyrone, come here, meet Erik! I know I’ve told you kids about him a few times, this is Erik Stevens, one of my old students. Went to the Naval Academy, then MIT, served in the Navy—are you discharged, of course you are, look at that hair—”

The kid—Tyrone—took it all in with wide eyes.

“Yeah, I’m out. Honorable discharge just a few months ago, I’m taking some time to travel. Wanted to visit the old stomping grounds too, see what’s changed,” said Erik.

It wasn’t a lie, not entirely. And yet, as Mrs. C beamed at him, he felt as guilty and ashamed as if it was a complete lie.

“Well, I’m so happy you spared some time to come visit your old favorite teacher.”

Erik smiled, and hoped it came out charming and boyish instead of off-putting. “Now, who said you were my favorite teacher?” he teased, and Mrs. C swatted his arm playfully, laughing.

“Come on now, don’t be setting a bad example for the youth,” she said. “Tyrone here is hoping to get into Cal, and I always tell him it’s absolutely in reach for him, and see? Erik here got into the Naval Academy with grades just like yours, and the Academy is far more selective.”

Tyrone looked at him with something too close to awe on his face. The kid was so damned young, still chubby-cheeked and sweet-faced, like even a childhood in West Oakland hadn’t been rough enough to leave a mark yet.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tyrone, as he hefted his backpack onto one shoulder. “I gotta go catch my bus, Mrs. C, but thanks for the help with my essay. Nice to meet you, sir.”

When Tyrone left, Mrs. C gestured him towards one of the desks before she perched on the edge of her own desk, beaming all the while. Squeezing into the desk’s cramped plastic seat made Erik feel like an ungainly monster, and old adolescent muscle memory nearly had him slouching his shoulders and hunching into his jacket. He didn’t deserve Mrs. C’s beaming pride and joy, but he wasn’t sure he could tell her the truths that would snuff that pride and joy out.

“So, catch me up, Erik. How are you? I got your last letter after you graduated from MIT, and I know you were headed into service with the Navy…”

He shifted in the desk’s plastic chair, making it squeak and creak. “Yeah, sorry I didn’t write after that.”

Mrs. C waved the apology off. “You were too busy to be humoring your old English teacher, I know, I don’t mind. Now tell me, did you end up on any submarines?”

“Nah, I got accepted into the SEALs.”

Confusion and something like dismay dimmed the brightness on Mrs. C’s face. It got his hackles up, because it had been fucking _hard_ to get into the SEALs. Two years of brutal training, to say nothing of fighting with Navy bureaucracy about the career shift. The Navy hadn’t sent him to MIT for a masters in engineering just for Erik to get his ass killed in a SEAL training accident or on a combat deployment. So he’d had to be twice as good, _three_ times as good, as every other SEAL hopeful just to convince the Navy they couldn’t afford to _not_ have him as a SEAL.

“Don’t give me that look, Erik Stevens, I’m proud of you, I know what an achievement that is, but I’d hoped—well, I’d hoped, when the Navy sent you to MIT, that you’d be spared from being sent into active combat.”

“Yeah, I’d hoped that too, at first,” muttered Erik, because he’d had a plan back then, when he’d still been trying to play by the rules of America’s rigged game, and it had seemed so damned simple. Get into one of the military academies, have the US government pay for all his education, and excel enough to end up as a commissioned officer doing something interesting but not dangerous until he could get to Wakanda. Not a bad plan for a dirt poor orphan with no connections.

“So why the SEALs?” asked Mrs. C.

“You know, my dad wasn’t American. He was from Wakanda. Tiny little country in Africa, you’ve probably never heard of it. I never knew any of my family over there, didn’t know for sure if I even had any, or if they knew about me. So I figured, I should find out, I should see about taking a summer trip to the motherland, y’know?”

Erik had been so fucking naive. Even with his dad’s journals, even with his hazy memories of his dad’s plans and his suspicions about his murder, he’d thought maybe it was all some kinda mix up, that maybe he’d just fallen through two nations’ worth of bureaucratic cracks. Maybe his dad had been working for his brother the king and some other Wakandan faction had killed him. Maybe this was still a fairy tale, where the brave prince had been killed by evildoers without the king’s knowledge. Maybe if Erik went back to Wakanda with a good education, in a decorated officer’s uniform, he’d be welcomed proudly and joyfully as a long-lost prince, and he’d be able to lead Wakanda and all their Black brothers and sisters into a better, freer world.

Yeah, no, it hadn’t gone down like that. Not at all. Obviously.

“So you went to Wakanda?” prompted Mrs. C gently.

Erik shook his head. “After my first year at MIT, I saved up enough money to take a trip to DC, pulled together what paperwork I had from my parents, and went to the Wakandan consulate. I told them about my dad.”

He’d done more than just that. He’d shown them his tattoo, which should have been incontrovertible evidence of his being Wakandan.

“And?” prompted Mrs. C when Erik had been silent too long. The memory was still bitter, corrosive, the furious disappointment of it still too fresh. Erik shrugged.

“And nothing. They took my paperwork, asked me a few questions. Told me they’d look into it and to come back the next day. When I did, they said N’Jobu had no sons, that I wasn’t Wakandan.”

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry.”

Erik shrugged again. He hadn’t taken no for an answer, obviously. He’d gone back the next day, and the next, until he’d had to get back on the train for his return trip to Boston, but not a single person in the Wakandan consulate had acknowledged Erik’s Wakandan birthright. They’d pretended like the tattoo meant nothing, and they hadn’t believed him about his dad. Even showing them his father’s ring had gotten Erik nowhere.

He’d realized it then: there had been no mix up, no mistake. There’d just been a cover-up. He and his dad weren’t long-lost princes, mourned and missed. They were enemies, traitors, the king’s dirty secrets. Wakanda had killed his father for the crime of wanting to free their people at any cost. There would be no welcome in Wakanda for Erik N’Jadaka Stevens, and if he’d kept pushing for one at the consulate, he might well have ended up dead just like his pops. So he’d gone back to MIT to come up with a new plan.

There were other ways to claim his birthright, after all, dirtier and harder ones. And though his father had been killed before he could bring his own plan to fruition, Erik had had his journals. He’d figured he could finish what his dad had started.

“It’s fine,” he told Mrs. C. “Made some adjustments to my career goals, after that, since—since I wasn’t gonna be helping Wakanda with an engineering degree. Didn’t wanna be stuck riding a desk anyway.”

“Riding a desk would have been safer, at least,” said Mrs. C, worry twisting her mouth out of its usual smile.

Erik spread his arms with a broad smile. “Hey, I’m safe and sound, aren’t I?”

“There are injuries that don’t show,” said Mrs. C quietly. “You know that.” Yeah, Erik did know that. His ritual scars prickled on his skin, a faint echo of the pain he’d felt getting them. “And you’re so smart, Erik, you’re capable of so much more than violence. I’d hoped, what with you going to the Naval Academy, that you’d be spared the worst of these awful wars, that you’d be an officer on some ship, or in a research position somewhere…”

“I wasn’t. I _was_ the worst of the war. Picked up the nickname Killmonger even. Did all that dirty black ops shit to ‘protect our freedoms.’ Funny how that involves killing a bunch of brown and Black folks, when brown and Black folks here don’t even get their fair share of those freedoms we’re killing for.”

Mrs. C was made of stern stuff, and used to teaching gangbangers who said worse shit than that, even if all those kids were talking bullshit. She didn’t flinch.

“I’m sorry you had to do that,” she said, soft and firm. “Do you have any support now that you’re back? I know it must feel like killing’s all you’re good for now, but you still have that engineering degree, and you’re still so young—”

Yeah, no, Erik was done here. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting. He got up, and so did Mrs. C.

“Don’t need support, I’m good. It was good seeing you, Mrs. C.”

“You have somewhere to stay?”

She looked so worried. “Black ops wet work pays real well, you don’t gotta worry about me living on the streets.”

She didn’t flinch, exactly, but her mouth wobbled before settling into a sad half-smile. “Alright, honey,” she said with a nod. “Don’t be mad at me for asking now, I’ve seen too many vets out on the streets. I don’t want that for you.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’m not hurting for money, I promise.”

“But you are hurting,” she said, no pity in the words, only certainty.

He didn’t come here for therapy. He headed for the classroom door. “Bye, Mrs. C. Thanks for everything.”

“Erik. I know it’s hard, but your war is over. Don’t let it kill you slow, now that you’re back home.”

He whirled back around to face her.

“My war isn’t _over_. My war is right here, where cops kill us for nothing and keep us enslaved in prisons we shouldn’t be in. My war’s not ever gonna be over until we’re _all_ free, until we take what’s _ours_.”

Not even this shocked Mrs. C. She narrowed her eyes at him, unmoved and unimpressed. “I thought you were smarter than that, Erik.”

“What? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You boys learn a little something about the oppressive systems that keep us down, and you think it’ll be real simple to just blow them up. Or maybe not simple, but blowing them up’s all you can think of to do with your anger, your pain. But what’s left after you blow it up and burn it all down, huh?”

She paused, silent, as if expecting him to answer, and it was just like he was sixteen again, one of those times when the whole classroom had gone sullen and quiet, no one quite brave enough to try for an answer when it might be wrong, or maybe worse, when it might be right.

He kept his mouth shut, and she continued, “Ashes. That’s what’s left. And we can’t put food in children’s mouths with ashes. We can’t build schools with ashes. We can’t build businesses on ashes.”

“Gotta start somewhere. It’s like a forest: you need forest fires to make room for new trees. It’s natural. It’s _necessary._ ”

“And meanwhile we’re all choking on the damned smoke,” said Mrs. C, her tone shockingly bitter, the lines on her face more grief than joy now. “You said you did a lot of killing for Uncle Sam. How’s that worked out, Erik? You help anyone? You make anything better? Or did you just start up the cycle of killing all over again? You can do better than that.”

She said it in the same tone of challenge as when she’d goaded students into better grades on their tests and essays.

“Not sure the world deserves better than that,” said Erik, more than a match for Mrs. C’s bitterness.

“Maybe not. But _you_ do. Start there.”

* * *

It didn’t matter, Erik thought, as he walked out of the high school and back out onto the streets. It didn’t matter if Mrs. C thought he could do better, if she thought he could save the Black community with some _uplift_ or _survival pending revolution_ shit. All Erik had was four days: four infinite days, where nothing he did mattered, where no change was permanent.

It was all well and good to talk about breaking out of a cycle of violence, but all Erik _had_ was the cycle.

He walked until he ended up back at the BART station, where he idly contemplated throwing himself in front of the train just to start this loop over again already. There was nothing else for him here in Oakland, nothing to fill up his remaining two and a half days with. Unless…Erik had been so fixated on Wakanda holding the answer to his time loop. But there was no particular reason to think Wakanda was the only place where Erik could complete the right sequence of events to end this.

And, he realized, his plan to become king and ship weapons wasn’t the only unfinished business in this tiny, four-day universe. There was his dad, stuck in some astral plane version of the place where he’d died, a ghost haunting an empty, extra-dimensional home. Was it his treason against Wakanda that had put him there, the betrayal a crime that exiled him even in death? That couldn’t be it, not when T’Chaka the kin killer was chilling in the spirit veld with some big cats.

 _Was he at least buried properly_ , the queen mother had asked.

Could it be that simple? Putting his dad’s soul to rest?

It sounded like bullshit, but bullshit was pretty much all Erik had left to try.

* * *

It took nearly an hour of googling and navigating through phone trees and receptionists before he had an appointment with the coroner’s office for the next day. He’d had to lay his sob story on thick to get the coroner to see him so soon: _I just wanna find out what happened to my dad, before I ship out. I never got to pay my respects, or say goodbye, and I couldn’t even get back to Oakland ‘til now…_

_Of course, Lieutenant Commander Stevens. Come by tomorrow and we’ll see if we can track down any records for you._

Too bad he didn’t have his uniform to help sell his sob story even more; people had respect for a fancy uniform, even if they self-evidently didn’t have any real respect for the person in it. _Support the troops_ hadn’t ever meant anything beyond _support the war_. Whatever, cutting his hair would have to do; like Mrs. C had said, no way were his locs anything close to regulation, even if they were short.

His phone directed him to the nearest barbershop, an old school kind of joint where nearly everyone, barber and customer alike, eyed Erik’s hair with vague disapproval. Too “hipster” for this crowd, maybe, or just too young, or too street. Maybe not too young, he amended. There was a kid getting a haircut, young enough or just small enough to still need a booster seat so the chair didn’t dwarf him. He was swinging his legs and chattering happily to the indulgent barber, who had to keep gently directing the boy to stay still.

The barber with a station next to the kid was free, and he gestured Erik over to the empty chair in front of him.

“What can I do for you, son?”

“Take it all off,” said Erik.

The barber nodded amiably as he settled the barber cape around Erik’s shoulders. “You want a fade, or do you want it _all_ off?”

“Nah, just a fade, thanks. Same on top as on the sides.”

“And a shave too?”

Erik grimaced into the mirror. He looked obnoxiously baby-faced without any facial hair, but that would help sell his story. And it wasn’t like it would last past the next couple days.

“Yeah, guess so,” he said, and closed his eyes. Hopefully the barber would take it as a signal that he didn’t want to shoot the shit. If it also meant he didn’t have to watch his locs get cut off, well, that was just a bonus.

Eyes closed or not, he could still hear the snip-snip of the scissors.

“Usually it’s just the kids who look so unhappy about a haircut,” said the barber. “And it seems like a damn shame to cut these locs if you don’t even want to.”

“They’re not regulation.” He could sense the barber pausing. When Erik opened his eyes, he resumed his work.

“No, don’t imagine they would be. What branch?”

“Navy SEALs,” he said, and got a low, impressed whistle in response. The whole barbershop murmured with something like approval. Erik shifted uncomfortably and the chair squeaked. He should have lied.

“No shit?” said his barber. “That’s the real deal.”

“Hear that, little man? You practically got a real live superhero sitting right next to you!” said the other barber. The kid twisted around to look at him with wide eyes, like he was Captain America or some shit. “The SEALs are the best of the best. Maybe you can grow up to be one, huh?”

The kid’s eyes got wider, more bright and starry, his mouth open in unselfconscious wonder. Erik had to brutally choke back some vicious sound of pure denial—a sob or scream, maybe, a half-crazed laugh—and it tore up something deep inside him, like a bullet he’d aimed at himself.

“ _No_ ,” was all that came out, raw and awful. Everyone froze for an endless stretch of seconds. In the mirror he could see the barbers’ slow understanding, and the pity and discomfort that followed it.

He could see himself too, desperate and sick at the thought of that kid with a gun in his hand. Did it make any real difference to this kid, whether it was the US government that put a gun in his hand, or a gang, or Erik’s possible armed revolution? Either way, his hands wouldn’t be clean. Either way, he’d be fighting.

 _You didn’t wonder what it would mean to throw me into a war?_ His own words to his dad came back to take a bite out of him. And Mrs. C— _you make anything better? Or did you just start up the cycle of killing all over again? You can do better than that._

“You can do better than that,” Erik told the kid, in a voice that only wobbled a little. The kid didn’t notice it anyway. His wounded outrage at being told no shifted into scrunched-face suspicion.

“What’s _better_ than being the best of the best?”

“Lotta different ways to be best of the best,” said Erik, and knew even as the words came out of his mouth that it was exactly the kind of copout he’d have hated to get when he was that age. Thankfully the kid’s barber bailed him out.

“And even more ways to be a hero,” he said with an only slightly forced smile. “Me, I think firefighters are the best of the best.”

The kid was still young enough to think firetrucks were the coolest thing ever, so the diversion was successful, and Erik’s barber returned to his work. Erik tried to get himself the fuck together. The unavoidable mirror right in front of him showed him just how much he was failing at that. His attempts to school his face back to its once habitual hardness didn’t quite stick: too much despair in his eyes, too much trembling in his mouth, all his hard-won armor falling away. He got to see the terrible compassion on his barber’s face grow.

Erik closed his eyes, and tried very hard not to think of anything at all. He wasn’t very successful. As the hum of the clippers started, his thoughts ran in circles, loops within loops, each one getting bigger and bigger, harder and harder to escape.

Was there a way out of any of this? Not just the four days, but was there any escape from the whole damn cycle, from the wheel of the world and the people crushed under it? He thought he’d found a way out when he finally got everything he’d wanted: the throne, the power, the weapons, the first spark of a revolution that would finally free all his people. But even that was just another loop. Even if he didn’t get caught in it, he’d trap someone else, someone like this poor, bright-eyed little kid. He went over and over it, looking for a way out that didn’t feel like giving up or giving in, and hoped no one in the barbershop noticed his low-key breakdown.

His barber seemed willing to ignore it, at least, and did his job fast, but gentle.

“Alright, we’re done,” he said, and took the cape off of Erik’s shoulders. He brushed away any lingering hair, his hands careful on Erik’s neck and shoulders.

“Thanks,” Erik told him, and didn’t meet the other man’s eyes in the mirror.

He put a big, warm hand on Erik’s newly shorn head, the way his dad used to, the way Uncle James—no, Zuri—used to. From the barber, the gesture was less familiar, a tentative kindness. Or a benediction.

“Stay safe out there, son,” he said.

* * *

Between his close-cut fade, his freshly shaved face, and his bland, business casual clothes, just looking in the hotel bathroom mirror gave Erik an uncomfortably vivid flashback to being Cadet Erik Stevens, age 20: baby-faced and desperate to be taken seriously, to claw his way up in the world. He wasn’t that kid anymore. Even just pretending to be an older version of that kid made his skin crawl and his stomach twist up in furious knots. This was what he’d calculated would give him the best results from the coroner’s office though: looking wholesome and clean-cut, the ideal brave little soldier.

He was glad he’d made the effort when he saw the coroner walking towards her office. She was a plump, middle-aged white woman in a pantsuit, so Erik would probably need every advantage he could get with her. She didn’t break stride when she saw him, just thrust her hand forward for a handshake.

“Lieutenant Commander Stevens? I’m Dr. Stone.”

Her grip was a finely calibrated mix of firm and gentle, trustworthy and comforting; the handshake of a woman who was undoubtedly used to giving careful condolences.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Erik. “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”

“Here, let’s go into my office. Based on what you told me over the phone, I’m guessing you don’t have a death certificate?”

Erik followed Dr. Stone into her office, a neat space that made good use of its not particularly spacious confines. Nothing marked it as being a coroner’s office: no bones lying around, no alarming medical instruments. Just photos and books, a couple of healthy plants in cheerful clay pots. Dr. Stone wanted people to feel comfortable in here, Erik guessed. She didn’t want to remind them of death. Not like her interior design needed any grim touches; anyone who was in a coroner’s office knew damn well they weren’t here for good news.

“No, ma’am, no death certificate. I was a minor, no one really told me anything, or gave me any paperwork. I’ve got these old newspaper articles though.”

He passed the printouts over to her, a handful of pages that represented the few inches of space the newspapers had devoted to his dad’s murder and the dead-end search for his killer.

“1992,” murmured Dr. Stone to herself as she read the articles. After only a minute, she looked up at him. “You’re certain no one claimed your father’s body? I know you said you didn’t attend any service, but maybe a local church chipped in for a burial, or your old neighborhood took up a collection, or a distant family member…”

Erik shook his head. “No one, ma’am. My ma was in prison, and my dad’s only family was back in Wakanda. I didn’t have any way to contact them, and neither did social services or the cops on the case.”

“Alright. Well, back in ’92, we were still in the old building on Fourth Street. The records going back that far aren’t onsite here,” she said, then she hesitated, her thin lips going even thinner, her brown eyes turning grave and compassionate.

“What is it?” Erik prompted.

“I can certainly help you put in the records request, but…if you’re right and no one claimed the body, then I can tell you with reasonable certainty that your father was cremated.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Hearing it still turned the room cold and airless.

“Okay…do y’all keep the ashes, or…”

Dr. Stone grimaced. “We were always low on storage space at Fourth Street. They really weren’t the best facilities. They’d have done their best to hold onto the remains for at least a year, but after that…the standard practice then, and now, is to scatter the ashes in the Pacific, out by the Golden Gate Bridge. I can—I can put you in touch with the man at Evergreen Cemetery who’s been performing the service.”

“The ocean,” repeated Erik with flat disbelief. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in his chest and came out as an awful noise that bore no relation to laughter. “The _ocean_ , he’s buried in the _ocean_ , what the fuck.”

He buried his face in his hands and only barely stopped himself from screaming in impotent fury. Erik’s infinitely repeating life was a joke. _Bury me in the ocean_ , Erik had told T’Challa, back when he’d thought death was final. Back when he’d thought it was just his mama’s ancestors who were lost under the waves of a different haunted ocean. But there his dad was too, a prince of Wakanda, scattered carelessly in the cold Pacific, and maybe damned to some kind of limbo for it.

“I’m so sorry, Lieutenant Stevens,” said Dr. Stone. “If it’s any comfort, the service isn’t an afterthought, it’s done right, with dignity. They’re respectful—”

He let his hands fall and looked up at her. To her credit, she barely flinched and held his eyes with grave compassion. “Wakandans bury their dead, or inter them on Wakandan soil,” he told her. “That’s—that’s what’s proper, that’s what _right_ for them.”

Dr. Stone nodded and folded her hands together, seemingly genuine sorrow in her eyes. “The system failed you. You and your father both.”

“Yeah, no shit.” He lurched up from the chair. “Out past the Golden Gate Bridge, you said?”

“Yes. If you’d like for me to arrange for a boat to take you—”

“No. No, it’s fine.” He wouldn’t have time for that. “Thank you,” he told Dr. Stone, because it wasn’t like any of this was her fault, and she’d given it to him straight, no bullshit.

“I’ll put in a records request anyway, just in case. Again, I’m so sorry.”

* * *

_What next?_

The bitterly cold wind whipping along the Golden Gate Bridge stung his face and his watering eyes. The bridge’s pedestrian walkway was sparsely populated this close to the Marin side; most of the tourists turned back towards the city before they got this far. Erik was alone, except for the occasional jogger and the cars rushing past.

The loop would reset tonight, like it always did. He didn’t have much hope that he’d finally see tomorrow. If this mobius strip time loop had any actual purpose beyond torturing him, Erik doubted he’d fulfilled it by finding out what had happened to his dad’s body, especially since he couldn’t even fulfill the bullshit, useless goal of putting him to rest, as if his dad were some kinda restless ghost.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Erik told the wind, and it tore his words away into senselessness. “I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do!” he shouted, and still, there was no answer, nothing but the impassive roaring of cars.

They hadn’t finished the suicide fencing yet, this far along the bridge. The waters of the Bay beneath him were a placid blue-green, rippling gently with small whitecaps kicked up by the wind. It was far from the worst final resting place. Erik sure as hell didn’t think being consigned to these waters was worth eternal afterlife exile.

He climbed over the railing. This wasn’t going to be the last loop. He was just pushing the reset button early.

If it was though. If it was the last.

Well, if it was, fuck it. Erik had _tried_. He’d failed and he’d succeeded and he’d even done nothing at all, and everything in between those three options, and he was still here, trapped in the same four days. It didn’t matter, nothing changed.

Was anything ever going to fucking _change_?

He let go of the railing, and fell.

* * *

He woke up gasping, undrowned.

* * *

The next loop passed in a haze, Linda’s voice sounding about as intelligible and meaningful as the _wah-wah_ trombone noise of the adults in an old Peanuts cartoon. At one of his foster homes, one of the other kids had been obsessed with those damn cartoons, had played the tape of _Play It Again, Charlie Brown_ over and over and over again, until the tape had broken. Erik had been so damn relieved, but the kid had replaced Charlie Brown with Barney, of all things, and that had been so much—

“Erik! Get up, we gotta go!”

Linda was shaking him by the shoulder now, and though he didn’t resist the motion, he didn’t get up either.

“No.”

“What do you mean _no_? This is _your_ goddamn plan! Get up!”

“I’m over the plan, it’s not gonna work. Go away, leave me alone.”

He pulled the covers over his head, and held them tight even as Linda tried to tug them off. She cursed him out and ranted for a few minutes, then she turned sweet. He felt her sit on the bed, felt her small, warm hand on the sheet-covered lump of his shoulder.

“Erik, baby, c’mon. I know you feel low sometimes, I know it’s hard. But we’ve been planning this, remember? We won’t get a shot like this again any time soon.”

“Do it yourself,” he snarled. “It’s pointless anyway.”

Nothing mattered, nothing changed.

Linda’s hand moved away, and then the weight of her on the bed did too. “Alright. If that’s how you’re gonna be. We’ll get it done without you.”

She left, eventually. She didn’t come back. It didn’t matter. Erik stayed in bed and let time drag him uselessly forward, until it gave up the illusion of forward progress, and twisted and curved back in on itself, just like it always did.

* * *

He went straight to T’Challa in the next loop. No tradecraft bullshit, no carefully choreographed “accidental” meeting: he just went right up to T’Challa’s hotel room door and knocked.

Okoye answered, of course.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her tone polite but her dark eyes watchful.

“I need to talk to Zuri,” he told her, then he craned his head around her for a glimpse of T’Challa, and raised his voice. “Tell T’Challa I need to talk to Zuri!”

“There’s no one here by that name. I’m sorry, who are you?” asked Okoye, sounding a lot less polite now.

“N’Jadaka, son of N’Jobu, and I really need to talk to Zuri. Here on a kimoyo bead, over Skype, back in Wakanda, I don’t care. I just need to talk to him.”

“N’Jobu’s son?” came T’Challa’s voice, followed by T’Challa himself, looking curious and wary.

“Hey, cuz. Can we skip all the suspicion and the accusations and shit? Literally all I want is to talk to Zuri. Do whatever the hell you want with me after that, but just—I gotta tell him N’Jobu’s spirit isn’t at peace, and that I’m trying to fix it. You just saw your dad’s spirit, right? After the challenge? Well, my dad isn’t chilling on the ancestral plane with yours. He’s somewhere else. And I don’t know what the hell else to do anymore but try and fix it.”

He’d been looping for over a year now, at least. He didn’t let himself think about just how much longer than a year it had been, even though the calculations ran automatically in the back of his head—91.25 loops equalled a year in subjective time for him and maybe he’d let himself lose count but he had to have passed 100 loops by now—no. _Don’t think about it._ The point was: no change in the physical world seemed to matter, and no sequence of events got him to a fifth day. But in the spirit world, his dad and T’Chaka knew time was fucked up. Maybe that was where this could be fixed. And to get there, or to learn more about it, he’d need a priest.

“ _What_ ,” demanded Okoye. “What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t that kinda shit a priest’s business? Spirits and the ancestral plane?” Erik laughed, helpless and hopeless. “I need a _priest_ , General. Please.”

T’Challa looked at him for a long moment, and Erik slumped. He knew how this was gonna go now: a barrage of questions Erik couldn’t answer without sounding like a nutjob, and T’Challa kindly turning him away, or putting him off.

“How do you know your father’s spirit is not on the ancestral plane?” asked T’Challa.

“I can’t explain that to you right now. Please, just call Zuri. Tell him this is the literal least he owes me. He’ll know what I mean.”

“My King,” said Okoye, a caution in two words and a speaking look.

T’Challa put a hand on her shoulder, and she stepped away from the door. “Come inside, cousin. We’ll call Zuri.”

* * *

Inside, Erik offered what proof he had that his father had been Wakandan; then calls were made, hushed discussions were had. He should have timed this visit better. The Wakandans still needed to go meet Ross and pick up Klaue, and Erik knew that wouldn’t go smoothly for them. Might even go badly, actually, but too late to do anything about it now, not without compromising himself. For now though, he apparently checked out enough for T’Challa to decide he should come back to Wakanda with them.

“I spoke to Zuri, cousin, and he will meet with you when we get to Wakanda,” said T’Challa.

Erik must have looked like shit, because T’Challa put a gentle, comforting hand on his shoulder, and softened his voice to a register that ought to have been reserved for small animals and children. T’Challa was always so fucking _kind_ , when Erik wasn’t trying to kill him. Sometimes even then. Just now, the kindness was worse than any killing blow: it was like a small tap on a fault line that spread tiny fractures all through him. Any more and he’d shake apart and shatter.

“Perhaps you can tell me more about your father on the way,” continued T’Challa. “I confess I don’t know much about my late uncle.”

“Yeah, I’m guessing your dad didn’t talk much about him, huh,” muttered Erik. He shrugged off T’Challa’s hand. “And I know he didn’t tell you about me.”

Tense brackets formed around T’Challa’s mouth. “No, he didn’t. I will be glad to learn more about both you and Uncle N’Jobu now, though.”

It wasn’t even a polite nicety, judging by how T’Challa was hesitating to leave, how his eyes were fixed on Erik’s face. What was he looking for, Erik wondered. A familial resemblance, or a tell?

“My King, we are expected,” said Okoye, and T’Challa nodded.

“We’ll return soon, I hope. Please, feel free to discuss your—” There was a slightly too long, awkward beat of silence while T’Challa searched for the most diplomatic word for Erik’s whole deal. _Good luck with that, cuz._ “Situation with Nakia.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

* * *

Royalty really traveled in style, thought Erik as he roamed the penthouse suite restlessly. Nakia watched him from her seat on the couch, prim and pretty. She would make T’Challa a good queen, some day. People would think she was soft, with that inviting, glowing beauty of hers, and they wouldn’t notice how quickly and wholly she disarmed them, either literally or figuratively. War Dog training didn’t play; Erik had hoped to rely on exactly that to build a Wakandan empire. So much for that plan now.

“We did not know Prince N’Jobu had a son, but Zuri said he knew of you,” said Nakia. She smiled at him, polite and open, nothing but mild interest in her voice, and Erik wasn’t totally batshit yet, he knew he should respond the same way. But it was hard to bother with the effort of a lie when he knew all of this wouldn’t matter anyway.

“Ask what you wanna know, I’ll answer,” Erik told her. “No need to pretend this isn’t an interrogation.”

Even with the permission, Nakia kept up the pretense that this was just a getting-to-know-you conversation. It could almost have been a first date, even, if not for the sharp attentiveness in the way Nakia looked at him and the thoroughness of her questions, or Erik’s own weariness. He used to be able to break out the charm. He could’ve turned this interrogation around on her. The very thought was exhausting now. There was no point in pretending.

Finally, she got to the question she’d been circling towards all along. “You said your father’s spirit isn’t at peace. What did you mean? Do you believe you are being...haunted?”

“I wish. I’m just outta options, here.”

Nakia’s forehead wrinkled in confusion and concern, and maybe that was even genuine, but before she could ask another question, her kimoyo bead chimed, and she stepped away to take the call.

“Everything okay?” he asked when she returned.

“Yes,” she said with a small frown. “Yes, it seems so. We will meet T’Challa and Okoye at the airfield.”

* * *

So okay, Klaue was either dead or in the wind, Erik didn’t care which; all he cared about this loop was seeing Zuri, and whatever had happened at the meeting with Ross, T’Challa hadn’t changed his mind about taking Erik back to Wakanda.

“What did your father tell you about Wakanda?” asked T’Challa once the jet was in the air.

“That it’s the most beautiful place in the world.”

T’Challa smiled, a dazzling sunburst kind of smile, full of pride and adoration, and Erik’s heart simultaneously sped and up ached with some kind of longing.

“That it is,” said T’Challa.

Erik disciplined his heart rate back to steadiness. The ache persisted though.

“He told me that it’s the most technologically advanced place in the world too, and I know about the vibranium,” added Erik. Nakia and T’Challa exchanged a cautious look, and Okoye glanced back at them sharply from her seat in the cockpit. “It doesn’t matter to me what y’all are doing in your little bubble. Like I said, I just wanna talk to Zuri.”

The conversation faltered after that, though T’Challa tried his damndest. There were moments when Erik almost wanted to try, when he wanted to pick up the thread of conversation and sew it into something that could tie them together: condolences for T’Chaka’s death, or telling T’Challa more about his own father, or himself. Hell, even geeking out over Wakandan tech. He couldn’t see the point though. It would all unravel in three days, only to tangle and twist back in on itself, leaving Erik with nothing more than what he’d started with.

* * *

Zuri was waiting for them outside the Citadel when the jet landed, straight-backed in his purple priest’s robes, staff in hand. And yet, he still looked small; regret and grief weighed down his shoulders, carved themselves deeply into his face.

He tried to greet Erik with a smile. He wasn’t all that successful. “Erik—N’Jadaka. I am so happy to see you.”

“Bullshit,” said Erik. “That’s fine, I don’t need you to be happy to see me. I’m here to talk about my dad and putting his spirit to rest. You know, on account of how T’Chaka murdered him and all.”

“My father _what_?”

 _Fuck_. Now Erik had to deal with this drama.

* * *

Once it was obvious that Zuri wasn’t going to bother to lie about what went down between T’Chaka and N’Jobu, Erik mentally checked out and let Zuri handle all the disbelief and recriminations and shit.

“N’Jadaka, I am so sorry—” started T’Challa, sincere as always. At least, the way he always was when Erik didn’t come in swinging and shooting.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Erik, and kept his focus on Zuri. “So, we done with the soap opera shit? Can we talk? Like I said, I think I need a priest.”

* * *

Zuri took him to the temple. Not the Hall of Kings where Wakanda’s dead monarchs were buried and where the heart-shaped herb was grown, but the Citadel’s temple: an obviously ancient place that wore its years with grace and pride. An enormous vibranium statue of Bast dominated the space, hewn so beautifully that it almost seemed alive. Which was the point, probably, and meant to make Erik and anyone else in its presence feel uncomfortably seen.

“I’m glad to see you’re well, Erik.”

“No thanks to you. You know what happened after your king killed my dad? I went into the system. Group homes, foster homes, a whole buncha people who didn’t want me and didn’t care about me. My ma died in prison, and I only found out after I tried to call her. But whatever, I’m not here to tell you my sob story. You know my dad didn’t get a funeral?” Zuri winced, but Erik didn’t let him interrupt, just kept the rush of words flowing. “Once the investigation was closed—which didn’t take long, even though they never charged anyone with my dad’s murder, because what does Oakland PD care about another Black man dead in the projects? Anyway, they cremated him. Dumped his ashes in the Bay.”

“I tried—I wanted to come back, to arrange for N’Jobu’s funeral, and to see you settled, but the police suspected me, and I couldn’t risk being arrested.”

“Yeah. And let me guess, your king forbade it.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I should have—I should have tried harder. I should have convinced him to bring you with us.”

Seeing Zuri’s shame provided some cold satisfaction. Erik hoped Zuri had spent a lot of sleepless nights with that guilt and shame. It made up, just a tiny bit, for all those nights Erik had cried himself to sleep.

“Okay. Thanks, I guess. That’s not the problem right now. The problem is he wasn’t buried, right? What’s that mean, spiritually speaking?”

Zuri squinted at him in wary confusion. “It’s been over twenty years. Why is this an urgent matter for you now?”

“Because I’ve been to the ancestors’ plane now. I’ve seen T’Chaka, and I’ve seen my dad, and they aren’t in the same place. My dad’s stuck in that damned apartment. Has been this whole time. And now I’m stuck in the same four days, and I’ve tried everything to bust out, and I can’t. So I’m thinking, maybe if I get my dad unstuck, then—” He stopped, looked at how Zuri’s confusion had shifted to something between disbelief and pity. “You don’t believe me.”

Zuri’s eyebrows went up. “It’s hard to believe,” he said slowly. “Erik, I know you’ve had a hard time, but—”

“Yeah, and who’s fault is that? You owe me this, Uncle James. Even if I’m a psycho nut job, you _owe_ me this.”

Zuri’s hands tightened on his staff, and his eyes flicked up towards the statue of Bast. The sense of being seen intensified; it was just a psychological thing, the deliberate result of the way the statue and temple were set up. And yet Erik remembered that thunderous growl in the spirit realm. Goosebumps rose on his skin and the back of his neck itched with the urge to turn around. He didn’t. He kept his spine straight and his eyes on Zuri.

“Yes. Yes, alright, I suppose I do. What do you want?”

* * *

“A journey to the ancestral plane is only to be undertaken by those who take the heart-shaped herb to become the Black Panther, or by those seeking to become a priest or priestess,” said Zuri, but he kept mixing up the bitter herb concoction that would send him there, so Erik figured Zuri wasn’t gonna stand on principle now.

“Uh huh, sure, let’s call this a special circumstance. So tell me, how can I put a Wakandan soul to rest when there’s no body to bury? How do I bust someone out of spirit jail?”

Zuri didn’t look up from his mortar and pestle. “I said the prayers for N’Jobu. When I returned to Wakanda, I came to the temple. I was not a priest then, not yet, but I did your father what honor I could, Erik.”

“And did T’Chaka?”

Zuri set the pestle down. “I don’t know. I think so. But I had hoped my prayers would be enough.”

“They weren’t,” said Erik, and Zuri flinched. He added some dark liquid to the concoction in the mortar, and took up the pestle again.

“Have you considered that it might be your father who has trapped himself in so-called spirit jail?”

“Why the fuck would he do that? He’s not the one who killed his kin.”

“He betrayed his people. He sold us out to Ulysses Klaue, and Klaue attacked Wakanda to steal vibranium. Klaue _killed_ Wakandans for vibranium.”

“Yeah, and Wakandans are the only people that matter, I guess. All the rest of our brothers and sisters dying out there, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You really are your father’s son, aren’t you,” said Zuri with a crooked smile, then he sighed. “Your father’s intentions were good, Erik. But he was blind to the consequences of his plans, and that made him dangerous to Wakanda, and to the world. That didn’t mean I wanted him tried for treason, and I certainly didn’t want him to die.”

“Then what _did_ you want? You were in Oakland to spy on him.”

“I _wanted_ him to find a better way to achieve his goals, to do good for Wakanda and the world, together with T’Chaka. It was just too late for that, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Klaue was hired to assassinate T’Chaka at Bilderberg in 1990. He failed, of course, but T’Chaka was alarmed, and he became even more cautious about interacting with the world outside Wakanda. That was my original assignment as a War Dog, you know. I was on the team assigned to track down the assassin and whoever had hired him. We learned the would-be assassin was Klaue, and when we linked N’Jobu to Klaue too, T’Chaka thought—”

“Shit. He thought my dad had been the one who’d hired Klaue to kill him.”

It cast their confrontation in an uncomfortable new light: a personal betrayal, as well as a political one. If T’Chaka had thought his own brother had hired a random white dude to kill him, rather than just challenge him for the throne or for the Black Panther mantle...Erik couldn’t deny that the evidence looked bad for his dad, what with being linked to Klaue and an attack on Wakanda. _Really fucked that one up, Pops_.

Zuri nodded. “I told T’Chaka that I did not believe he had, that N’Jobu had only hired Klaue to steal the vibranium, not attack Wakandans, but when T’Chaka came to confront N’Jobu, well…you know what happened. They fought. T’Chaka was trying to protect me, and he killed N’Jobu.”

“So…maybe clearing all that up between my dad and T’Chaka will let my dad move on?”

It sounded like bullshit to Erik, but then, everything about this whole situation was pretty bullshit. Zuri gave the herbal mixture one last stir, and poured it into a small cup.

“It is certainly worth a try. And if you’re not insane or lying, and you really are stuck reliving the same few days over and over again, it isn’t as if you have much to lose by trying it.”

“I was really kinda hoping you’d have, like, a more mystical answer for me than this Ghost Whisperer shit.”

Zuri handed him the cup. “My mystical answer is that you have been granted the attention of the gods. Maybe you ought to listen to what they are trying to tell you.”

* * *

This time, when Erik walked into the apartment, his dad didn’t turn to greet him. He stood looking out into the strangeness beyond the window, the place that was and wasn’t the familiar vista of the East Bay.

“Your ashes are scattered out there, you know,” Erik told him, and Dad still didn’t turn around. “Out past the Golden Gate Bridge. So if that’s what’s got you haunting this apartment—”

“It isn’t,” he said, and finally turned to face Erik. It probably shouldn’t have been possible for a dead man to look like he hadn’t slept in a week, but that was what his dad looked like: there were deep bags under his red-rimmed eyes, and there was a bloodless and ashen undertone to his usually lustrous skin. “Thank you, though.”

“For what?”

“For trying. It was a nice thought, that a proper burial would end this.”

“Yeah. I talked to Zuri.”

“I saw,” said his dad, tipping his head towards the TV, its screen full of nothing but static now. “I did not know that was what T’Chaka thought. I didn’t know Klaue had…”

“Couldn’t have found literally anyone else to help you pull off your vibranium heist?” asked Erik.

“You’re working with him too,” snapped his dad.

“Nah, I’m _using_ him. My plan was always to kill him or turn him over to Wakanda.”

His father snorted. “So you’re avoiding some of my mistakes, wonderful. You should avoid the rest of them too, then. Zuri was right. You were right too.”

“About what?”

“I didn’t consider the consequences, not fully. I didn’t think about the blood on my hands.” His dad looked down at his hands, and Erik almost expected them to turn bloody. He raised his eyes to look at Erik. “You asked me before what I would do if I were you. I have an answer for you now, my son.”

“What is it?”

“I would try to find a better way. A path between mine and T’Chaka’s. Finding such a path won’t be easy, and it won’t be fast, but at least it won’t lead to endless war and conquest, to making monsters of ourselves.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that,” said Erik, because it was one thing to want to break free of war and the grim mobius strip of violence it led to, but it was another to do it just to end up right back at the status quo. “T’Chaka’s path was bullshit.”

“T’Challa’s path, then,” conceded his dad. Erik opened his mouth to call bullshit on that too, but his dad interrupted him. “If you even know it. Have you asked him? He’s a newly crowned king. If there is any time to push for change and reform, it is now, before he becomes set in his rule.”

“I doubt he’s down with global revolution.”

“Probably not, but you could ask him what he _is_ down with. You could ask the others too: Ramonda, the Dora Milaje, the War Dogs…you could understand Wakanda and its people, before you seek to change it.”

His dad took a tentative step towards Erik and placed a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was awkward and uncertain with both of them the same height—shit, nearly the same age now too, Erik realized—a shaky bridge to cover years’ worth of distance and the span between life and death. Even so, Erik nearly swayed forward, nearly stepped in close for a hug. He would stay himself for it, this time, he wouldn’t turn into that desperate kid again.

“I want you to know Wakanda and your people, Erik. I want you to know your family.”

“And I want you to bust out of spirit jail.”

Dad smiled. “I don’t think that will solve your time loop problem.”

The TV turned on with a crackle, and they both jumped and turned towards it. The white noise hiss of static turned deeper and darker, into a thrumming sound somewhere between a purr and a growl. The temple feeling of being _seen_ bled into the animal instinct certainty of being _hunted_ , and Erik remembered what Zuri had said. _You have been granted the attention of the gods. Maybe you ought to listen to what they are trying to tell you._ The TV screen now showed the image of the Wakandan ancestral plane where the panthers roamed the veld, and where T’Chaka sat, his shoulders bowed and his head in his hands. A phone rang somewhere in the apartment, and Erik and his dad both jumped.

“You should probably get that,” said Erik, the ring echoing and dopplering strangely as he was pulled back to life.

* * *

“Well?” asked Zuri as Erik gasped for air.

“I think it’s up to my dad and T’Chaka now.”

“And your...time loop situation?”

Erik sat up, and pointedly avoided looking at the statue of Bast that loomed over them. A kid’s impulse, maybe: _if I don’t see it, it can’t see me_. The thing exerted a gravity all on its own though, and Erik still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched—or, not just being watched, but of being _known_. Whatever, he was probably still tripping.

“Guess we’ll see,” he told Zuri with a shrug.


	3. Chapter 3

Busan, again. For once, it wasn’t entirely a disappointment. Getting to know Wakanda, and maybe even his family, was as good a plan as any at this point.

* * *

He started out simple, with W’Kabi and the Border Guard. After so many loops, Erik had a pretty good idea of how his choices branched, and what decision trees to follow to get the desired results. He knew what W’Kabi would do, if he was presented with a dead Ulysses Klaue and an American with a Wakandan War Dog’s tattoo. So that was what he did.

Erik landed the plane at the border and waited for W’Kabi and the Border Guard to show up. When they did, he gave W’Kabi a cover story that was only about 60% true. Maybe 70%. Klaue _had_ sort of been the proximate cause of Erik’s dad’s death, so it wasn’t entirely a lie to tell W’Kabi that was why he’d gone after Klaue.

W’Kabi didn’t seem to particularly care. He was a hard man, not easily swayed by Erik’s tale of woe. If a sob story was all Erik had come here with, this would have ended up like the Wakandan consulate all over again, with Erik politely and firmly turned away. But Erik had come bearing the gift of Klaue’s dead body, and that earned him some credit with W’Kabi. Enough to not be immediately turfed out to the wrong side of the border, anyway.

“What do you want?” asked W’Kabi.

“I just want to come home. To learn more about my people, my family, if I can find them,” said Erik. That part was more like 80% true, not that his 80% sincerity seemed to win W’Kabi over much.

“Very well,” said W’Kabi, unsmiling. “Come with me, and we’ll see if we can learn more about your father.”

W’Kabi took him to a Border Tribe village, one of the ones that looked like a collection of subsistence farmers’ huts. It wasn’t quite a Potemkin village: people actually lived here long-term for one thing, and it wasn’t as low-tech as it seemed. For W’Kabi to bring him here instead of to the Golden City meant he didn’t trust Erik’s story, which alright, fair enough. Erik didn’t really need W’Kabi to trust him, not this time around.

“I know about the Golden City, you know. You don’t gotta put on this show for me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” expression still stern and unsmiling.

Erik sighed. “My dad was a War Dog, I know what I’m talking about. It’s a’ight, I get it. Can’t let the rest of the world see what Wakanda’s got or else it’s open season, white conquest, World War III, blah blah blah.”

Finally, W’Kabi smiled at him, thin and insincere. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said again. He led Erik to an empty hut, and gestured him inside. “Wakanda is a humble nation of farmers and herders. Wait here, please.”

“Officer, am I being detained?” asked Erik, but W’Kabi was already out the door, and he wouldn’t have understood the grim joke anyway. 

* * *

When W’Kabi returned a couple hours later, he had something that was almost but not quite a welcoming expression on his face.

“Congratulations. Your father was indeed a Wakandan War Dog. You may actually get what you want.”

“So what next?”

“The King is not in Wakanda at the moment,” said W’Kabi. “Not that I’m not grateful you dealt with Klaue, but the King was in the process of arranging for extradition for him when you took matters into your own hands. He has something of a diplomatic mess to sort out now, and will not be returning to Wakanda for another couple of days at least.”

“No shit? That’s a hell of a coincidence,” Erik said, with his best and most earnestly helpful talking-to-superior-officers face.

W’Kabi studied him, a little smile on his face like he was inviting Erik to joke with him. “Come now, you can’t tell me you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know, man, honest. I’ve been tracking Klaue for a while. A buddy of mine at the CIA tipped me off about Klaue’s meet with an agent, and I hauled ass to Busan. Got there too late to intercept Klaue before the shit hit the fan, but I can improvise. Busan’s CIA station isn’t exactly supermax prison, you know?”

“Why not just leave him in CIA custody?” asked W’Kabi, his tone casual.

“I wanted him dead, not on the CIA payroll as an informant, or disappeared into some black site. I wanted _justice_. CIA wasn’t gonna give me that.”

This answer satisfied W’Kabi enough that some of the sharp suspicion turning his face dour lifted.

“Well. On that, we agree.”

“So, hey, what’d you find out about my dad? Have I got family here? Do they know about me?”

“He was a War Dog, as you said. Presumed dead in the field, I don’t have the clearance to give you any more information. No mention of you or your mother though. King T’Challa will be able to tell you more, once he returns. Until then, I am pleased to welcome you to my home.”

And wasn’t that interesting, that W’Kabi wasn’t telling Erik that his dad had been a prince of Wakanda. Not that it mattered. Whatever game W’Kabi was playing, he wouldn’t have time to see it through before the loop reset in three days. Erik wasn’t here to be W’Kabi’s pawn; he was here to see why W’Kabi and his Tribe were down with a war when no one else in Wakanda seemed to be. Erik hadn’t cared about why in previous loops, he’d just taken advantage of it. Now he wanted to know.

* * *

The people of the Border Tribe were cautiously welcoming, and unashamedly curious. They grilled him about everything: about Oakland, about his time as a Navy SEAL, about his mom, about his dad, about America, about Klaue. And it wasn’t only the Border Guard asking him, so it wasn’t like it was just a security measure. Everyone from the toddlers to the rhino caretakers had a question for Erik. Erik gathered up every last bit of patience he possessed, and answered the questions as honestly as he could.

“Forgive us,” said one of the Border Guard with a sheepish smile. “We don’t mean to interrogate you, but we don’t often get new people who know about the real Wakanda.” She paused and her smile turned into more of a grimace. “We never do, actually.”

“Excuse me,” said another member of the Guard, leaning over picnic bench serving as a dinner table. “You said you went to MIT? Is it true you Americans have to _pay_ for education?”

“Uh, yeah, but the Navy paid for me to go to MIT. I get that you don’t get many new folks, but you guys do get the internet, right? Feel like that oughta tell you way more than you wanna know about what’s going on in the rest of the world.”

A wave of denials rippled along the table, assuring him that the internet was poor substitute for a real live Wakandan-American. The more questions he answered, the more he realized: in a world getting smaller by the day thanks to mass media and the internet, Wakandan isolation was wearing thin.

* * *

“T’Challa will be returning tomorrow,” W’Kabi told him on the third day. “You will meet with him and the Council then.”

“Alright, thanks. I’m guessing I’ll be answering even more questions then.”

“Of course. I hope my Tribe hasn’t been bothering you too much with all the questions. They aren’t accustomed to outsiders.”

“Seems like they’re real interested in ‘em though. Is Wakanda ever gonna show the world what it really is?”

“I hope so. Now that T’Challa is king…we’ll see, of course. But yes, I hope so.”

“How do you think that’s gonna go? International aid, taking in refugees, that kinda thing?”

W’Kabi snorted. “No. No, I think the world is beyond such things.” W’Kabi gave him a bitter and knowing smile. “You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Do you truly think some refugee programs are going tomake any difference?”

It wasn’t like Erik disagreed with W’Kabi’s reflexive cynicism, but coming with the man’s smug superiority as it did, it didn’t sit right with Erik.

“They sure seem to make a difference to the refugees.”

W’Kabi waved that truth aside. “I mean out in the world. There are always refugees, and there are always too many of them. If Wakanda takes them in, we only weaken ourselves.” W’Kabi shook his head. “No, if we are to reveal ourselves, we will need to use force to restore some order and peace beyond these borders. I think my Tribe’s warriors are up to the task.”

“No offense man, I’m sure your warriors are great, but I don’t think you know what wars are like out there. Going out to conquer, to build an empire—that’s not like whatever border skirmishes you get into.”

Erik wasn’t even going to touch the thing about refugees. He wasn’t surprised that W’Kabi only wanted a one-way end to Wakanda’s isolation: to export war and peace, and import nothing. It would still be Wakanda versus the world, Wakanda on top and everyone else on the bottom, just in a new form.

“And you would know,” said W’Kabi, with the kind of patronizing condescension that made Erik’s knuckles itch to punch him.

“I was a fucking Navy SEAL with the Joint Special Operations Command, so yeah, I’d fucking know. I was out there killing for the American empire. Killing people I should’ve had common cause with, my Black and brown brothers and sisters.”

“Common cause?” asked W’Kabi, his forehead furrowing.

The confusion on his face was genuine, and Erik swallowed down a rising surge of bile and rage. W’Kabi had no fucking clue what it was like for a Black man out there in the world beyond these borders. All those times he’d allied himself with Erik, he hadn’t understood a single fucking thing about what they were really doing. It was only ever about Wakanda for him, and conqueror versus conquered. He wasn’t thinking of the big picture like Erik was. He didn’t give a shit about liberation.

“Yeah. All of us still dealing with slavery, colonialism, racism, all that. You know.”

W’Kabi shrugged. “Oh, that,” he said, then shook his head in disgust. “Primitive problems. Wakanda could render them meaningless.”

The world was so fucking _small_ to W’Kabi. His own tribespeople were hungry for more, grasping eagerly at every truth about the world outside their borders, and here W’Kabi was, reducing everything that wasn’t Wakanda down to _primitive problems_ , to something to be conquered.

It was just another loop, realized Erik. A Wakandan empire was still an _empire_ , and yeah, it’d probably be better than the likes of America now, or colonial empires past. A hundred loops ago, that would have been enough for Erik. But now…now it didn’t feel right. Now he thought: _I can do better_. _I have to do better_.

* * *

For dozens of loops, General Okoye had only been an obstacle for Erik to overcome. Winning her true loyalty was never gonna happen; for all that she claimed she served the king, when that king was Erik, her loyalty was conditional. At least, it was when Erik was embroiling Wakanda in a civil war and promising a global one, so that was fair, probably. Even when Erik wasn’t inciting violence, she remained suspicious of him, and that was fair too, given how recently her last king had been assassinated. Erik didn’t have high hopes for getting to know her, given all that.

After a loop with W’Kabi though, Erik wondered if Okoye agreed with her husband. Did she want to send her Dora Milaje out conquering? Or did she see a different path forward for Wakanda? Hell, did she even care at all about the bigger picture beyond how it would impact the continued safety and security of her royal charges? Erik didn’t have a damn clue. All he knew about her was that she was the decorated general of the Dora Milaje, she was inexplicably married to W’Kabi, her first and deepest loyalty was to Wakanda, and she was a hell of a fighter. He wasn’t sure any of that gave him an in to feel her and the Dora Milaje out more, but hey, Erik had apparently infinite attempts to get it right.

He started this next loop just as he had the last one, with busting Klaue out of CIA custody early. Only this time, instead of heading for Wakanda’s border, he brought General Okoye a present: Ulysses Klaue, unconscious, bound, and gagged.

“General,” he greeted her when she opened the hotel suite door. “I have something you and your king have been looking for.”

* * *

Okoye wasn’t impressed.

“I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Stevens, but this man was meant to face justice in Wakanda. The King must now deal with the political and diplomatic consequences of your vigilante justice, to say nothing of deciding whether or not to remand _you_ to the appropriate authorities.”

Given T’Challa’s own activities a couple weeks ago in Europe, Erik thought this was pretty rich. The only thing separating Erik’s vigilante justice from T’Challa’s attempt was T’Challa’s status. _You could do anything if you were rich and royal enough_ , thought Erik, _but god forbid one of the common folk attempt it_.

Not even verifying his identity as N’Jobu’s son made Okoye warm to him. Probably because thanks to him, the Wakandan delegation was stuck in Busan dealing with the fallout of Klaue’s aborted escape, and with a furious Everett Ross. Erik spent the entire loop trapped in bureaucratic and diplomatic limbo with Okoye, Nakia, and T’Challa in Busan; it turned out that pissing off the CIA was a bad idea. Also, it turned out that it made things hella awkward with T’Challa and Okoye.

“I would like to go just _one week_ without a member of the royal family starting an international incident. Just one.”

T’Challa made big, sad eyes at her. “I’m sorry, Okoye. I know it has been a difficult few weeks for all of us, between Vienna and my father’s death—”

“Wait, I count as a member of the royal family now?” asked Erik, and earned himself a ferocious glare from Okoye. “Right, yeah, sorry. _Timing_. My bad.”

Clearly, Erik hadn’t made the right approach this loop. He’d have to find a different way to get past her guard.

* * *

This time, he timed meeting the Wakandans for after Linda and Limbani’s attempt to execute Erik’s plan without Erik himself failed. Hopefully no one would figure out that said plan was in fact his, and that it had failed thanks to Erik’s own intervention. It wasn’t that hard to orchestrate a traffic accident, and oh, what a shame, Klaue sustained fatal injuries during his escape attempt. Unfortunate, but not at all an international incident, and it kept the Wakandan delegation clear of any wrongdoing. Agent Everett Ross was gonna have a real bad week though. Erik didn’t feel even a little bit guilty about that.

Erik intercepted the Wakandans on their way out of their swanky hotel, just before they could get in the car that would take them to the airport.

“Hey, excuse me, I’m sorry, can we talk for a sec?” He affected some breathlessness. “Holy shit, I’m so glad I guessed the right hotel.”

“And who are you?” asked Okoye, stepping in front of him to block his access to T’Challa.

He gave her his best nervous grin, let his eyes keep darting to T’Challa with what he hoped came across as curiosity, and offered her his hand. She didn’t take it.

“Right. Uh, I’m Erik, Erik Stevens. But my dad named me N’Jadaka. I, uh, think His Highness over there might be my cousin?” He waved at T’Challa.

“And why would you think that?” asked Nakia.

Erik reached slowly for the necklace around his neck, and pulled it off to present the ring on its chain to Okoye.

“Because, uh, my dad was Prince N’Jobu, apparently. He died when I was a kid? I didn’t think all the stuff he told me about Wakanda was true, but when I saw the Black Panther on the news this morning, I thought—maybe it _was_ all true.”

“And you just happened to be in Busan,” said Okoye as she took the ring from him, examining it closely.

“I was just over at CFAC, actually. I figured if you were so close by, I could at least try to find where y’all were staying, see if I could get some answers finally.”

Okoye passed the ring to T’Challa for his inspection. After just a few seconds, he gave it back to Erik.

“Hey, it looks just like your ring.”

That was laying it on too thick, probably, but T’Challa just nodded.

“Yes, it does. Let’s go back to the hotel to talk.”

* * *

Totally fake cover story aside, he went with 75% honesty on the backstory front this time, and while the 25% he was leaving out was a pretty crucial 25%, 75% of the truth got him to Wakanda with a minimum of fuss. He still ended up in front of T’Challa, the Council, and the Queen Mother, but this time he wasn’t in chains, and this time, they weren’t quite as suspicious of him, even though he played dumb or straight up lied about the 25% he was leaving out: who had killed N’Jobu? What was he doing in Busan? What exactly had N’Jobu been doing in Oakland?

_Don’t know, ma’am, the cops never arrested anybody; I’m a Navy SEAL, I was just finishing up some training at CFAC; I don’t know, I thought he was working at the Port of Oakland._

What truths he doled out, he doled out strategically: yes he had contacted Wakanda, but the Consulate had given him the brush off; no, he didn’t know why; yes, he’d ended up in foster care, and no, he didn’t know what had happened to his dad’s remains; yes, his dad had told him all about Wakanda, but he’d thought his dad’s stories were fairy tales, especially when no family came to get him after his dad died.

“Cousin, I ask for your patience while I make some inquiries to understand how this happened,” said T’Challa. His frown was carved deeply into his forehead, and there were a lot of significant looks and concerned murmurs passing around the throne room. “Okoye will show you the Citadel in the meantime. I promise, you will have a proper welcome soon.”

This was already a better welcome than he’d ever gotten before. It gave him the perverse urge to come clean about that 25%, to bare all of his ugly and dangerous truths and see who looked away first.

Instead, he said, “Sure, I can wait. And I won’t turn down a tour.”

* * *

“I don’t get the impression you’re a tour guide kinda person,” said Erik after a couple hours of a whirlwind tour around the enormous Citadel.

Okoye’s fast pace certainly wasn’t meant for sightseeing. She must have realized it, because she slowed down and let him take a proper look at the view of the Citadel’s courtyard from the window.

“We don’t get many tourists. Or any tourists at all, really.”

“Yeah, about that…I thought my dad was selling me some lost city of El Dorado sorta bullshit, with all the stories he used to tell me as a kid. But Wakanda’s really just been hiding all this time?”

“Our isolation is meant to keep us safe, and unconquered. If outsiders had known about our vibranium, our technology…” Okoye shook her head. “You see what they have done to the rest of the continent.”

“Yeah, I see. And I’m wondering why y’all were sitting here not doing anything about any of it.”

Okoye grimaced. “In recent centuries, the policy of isolation has seemed…less desirable, yes.”

“Recent _centuries_?”

“Wakanda’s history is long, Lieutenant Commander Stevens. We have had millennia of stability, millennia worth of a continuous culture and society. Longer even than the dynasties of Egypt.” Okoye spun her spear in a quick and tight little flourish. “This spear? It has been passed down Dora Milaje to Dora Milaje for nearly three thousand years. Compared to that, yes, the centuries of violence and unrest in the rest of the world seem recent.”

“Oh,” said Erik, off balance now. He hadn’t thought of it that way, too consumed with the urgency of his goals. Maybe he’d just pushed too hard, too fast for Wakanda.

“Wakanda is slow to change,” conceded Okoye. “But change it must, or we will be left behind by the world outside our borders, and that, perhaps, is an even more dangerous place to be than out in the open.”

“Out in the open’s looking pretty dangerous, given what just happened to your last king.” This sounded more heartless than Erik was going for this loop, so he added, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. That, evidently, was simply bad luck,” said Okoye, with carefully banked fury in her voice. “King T’Chaka was an unfortunate collateral casualty of a mad man’s grudge against the Avengers. T’Challa has ensured that man will face justice. Apart from that, I do not consider the few small steps Wakanda has taken to join the global community to be ‘out in the open.’ We are still hiding our true nature, and hiding, I think, is growing more dangerous than just venturing outside our borders.”

She wasn’t wrong. Security through obscurity only went so far, and it left Wakanda in a weak position: so long as Wakanda was unwilling to risk blowing its cover, its apparent weakness made it an easy target, or an easily disregarded casualty of other powers’ fights. It didn’t take a general like Okoye to see that an open show of strength could make Wakanda safer than continuing to expend resources on staying hidden. Maybe he and Okoye had some common ground here.

“You tell your king that?”

Okoye gave him a sidelong look. “It is not my place to dictate decisions of statecraft to my king.”

“Right, you’re just the bodyguard.” Erik put enough doubt in the words to make it clear he didn’t mean it as an insult.

“The Dora Milaje support the king and the royal family, we do not make policy decisions ourselves.”

“Choosing which members of the royal family to support seems like it could be a policy decision all on its own, sometimes. Or does Wakanda not have, like, coups and shit?”

“We have a formal mechanism to challenge the monarch, and every tribe has a voice in the council.” Erik just raised his eyebrows at her. “But yes, there have been ‘coups and shit,’ as you so eloquently put it.” She narrowed her eyes at him as if he was about to run off and assassinate T’Challa that very moment. “Why are you so interested?”

“Finding out I’m a member of the royal family makes it all pretty personally relevant. And I guess I wanna know what the truths behind the fairy tales are. A hidden kingdom with technology so advanced it might as well be magic sounds amazing and all, but what’s the cost, and who’s paying it? Wakandans sure as hell don’t seem to be.” He gestured at the Citadel and the city beyond it. “You could be helping so many people with all of this.”

“You sound like Nakia,” said Okoye with a wry smile. “I see that T’Challa will find himself having many more friendly debates about policy if you stay.” Before Erik could ask her what she meant, her kimoyo bead bracelet chirped. “Come, we are summoned back to the throne room.” 

* * *

Erik half expected to be thrown into chains on his return to the throne room; maybe they’d found out about his link to Klaue, or maybe he hadn’t been deemed Wakandan enough to be allowed to stay.Failing that, he expected to be lied to. Instead, he ended up having to push his acting skills to the limit to believably react to the whole ugly truth of what had gone down between his dad and his uncle as if it were a surprise. Zuri, it seemed, had spilled about everything, and from there, T’Chaka’s whole cover up unravelled.

T’Challa was visibly devastated, Zuri shame-faced, and Ramonda furious—not at him, she assured him.

“I’m so sorry, Erik—N’Jadaka,” she told him. Her eyes were bright, not just with her anger, but with grief and something else he couldn’t identify. “Had my husband told me, I would have gone to America to get you myself.”

“Even though my dad was a traitor, apparently?” asked Erik, and it didn’t take much effort to make sure his voice shook.

“Whatever N’Jobu’s crimes were, you were innocent,” said Ramonda, and the fervor of her words was matched with the ferocity with which she reached out to squeeze his hand. The tears he’d spent the last few minutes trying to summon without success welled up now, and spilled out fast and hard. He wiped them away angrily. “An innocent orphaned child, a Wakandan child—you should have been brought home. Zuri, _how could you_.”

Zuri bowed his head. “Because my king asked it of me.”

“Your king was wrong. It was _wrong_ ,” said T’Challa. He turned to Erik, and his voice was still full of bitter, disappointed fury. “You are welcome here, Erik. You’re welcome in this family. I’m only sorry you were alone for so long.”

_It wasn’t real_ , Erik tried to tell himself. If T’Challa or any of them knew the truth, all of it, they wouldn’t be welcoming him like this. They’d be calling him crazy, they’d be locking him up. And even if they never learned the whole truth, they’d get tired of Erik, they’d realize he was more American than Wakandan, that he was no prince, that Killmonger was the only name he’d ever had that was wholly true.

He wanted it to be real though. If this was the last loop, if somehow he got it right this time, or if the universe or Bast or whatever the fuck was causing all of this finally saw fit to end it, Erik could be okay with that.

* * *

T’Challa had made the offer so easily: _you are welcome in this family._ Like family was a guarantee of anything, like T’Challa could afford to trust Erik. _Do you know how many times I’ve killed you_ , Erik wanted to say. _Do you know that I could take your throne_? How easily T’Challa trusted that history wouldn’t repeat itself, that the past’s sins would stay there.

“I don’t know what justice we can offer you,” T’Challa told Erik after the most awkward family dinner imaginable on the first night of the loop. “My father cannot answer for his actions, and Zuri committed no actual crime according to our laws. But whatever you need from me, from us, to help make this right, you only have to ask.”

“Uh, thanks. I’ll have to get back to you on that. I’m still, you know, processing.”

T’Challa smiled at him, half grimace, half commiseration. “I am as well. My father was not the man I thought he was.“

“Neither was mine,” offered Erik.

He wondered how it was going, on the ancestral plane. Were their fathers reconciling? Would Erik and T’Challa even know if they had? And if their fathers did reconcile, would it make anything right out here in the real world?

* * *

The next morning, Erik intended to find Nakia to see if he could figure out just what Okoye had meant about him sounding like her, but the Queen Mother got to him first. She was no longer in mourning white, nor was she dressed quite so extravagantly as she had been every other time he’d seen her. Her locs were loose and unbound except for a small kerchief that barely contained them, and she was wearing a silvery gray gown. If there was a message in these choices, Erik couldn’t decipher it. He could read the signs of a sleepless night on her face easily enough though.

“T’Challa is busy today, I hope you don’t mind spending the day with me. There is much we have yet to discuss, I think.”

Before he could object or make any excuses, Ramonda took his arm and directed them towards a part of the Citadel he wasn’t familiar with.

“Uh, sure.”

“Have you seen the palace gardens yet? They were a particular favorite of your grandmother’s.”

“No, not yet, ma’am. General Okoye’s tour yesterday was indoors only.”

Ramonda made light conversation as she gently led him to a lush, green courtyard where the air was heavy with dew and the fragrance of flowers and growing things. All the sounds of the city and palace surrounding them were muted and covered by the hush of rustling leaves and the melodies of birds. It was as if they’d stepped out of the cool and ordered palace through a portal into the warm wilderness of the jungle.

“This counts as a garden?” said Erik, and Ramonda’s gentle laughter was answer enough. “Um, thank you for showing me.”

“Thank you for the gift of your wonder,” she said, and they walked slowly into the jungle garden in easy silence for a few minutes. When they reached a clearing with some benches, Ramonda sat and patted at the seat next to her, where Erik took a seat beside her. “I’m sorry about the…circumstances that have brought you here, now. But I’m not sorry you’re here. I know my son has already told you, and I will tell you again: you are welcome here, and we are happy to know you, if you would like to know us.”

“I’m not sure how you can welcome me when you barely know anything about me.” Belatedly, he remembered his manners. “But, uh, thank you.”

Ramonda’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “You’re family. It’s enough.”

“It wasn’t enough for your husband.”

“He shamed his tribe and his nation, abandoning you as a child the way he did,” said Ramonda, sudden fury making her fine features go harsh. “There is more than enough precedent for War Dogs bringing spouses and children from the outside back to Wakanda. It’s not common, but it happens.”

“Pretty sure T’Chaka just didn’t want to acknowledge a half-American kid as a prince of Wakanda.”

_The maintenance of our traditions_ , T’Chaka had said in the realm of the ancestors. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that was code for.

“What he thought would happen, I can’t imagine,” snapped Ramonda. “You’re here now and I doubt you’ll cause the destruction of Wakanda.”

His whole body flashed cold and then hot with a surge of guilt. “Right,” he said faintly.

She patted him on the arm. “In fact, I think you’ll be good for Wakanda, and for T’Challa.”

“Yeah?”

“We can’t continue as we have been, cut off from the rest of the world. T’Chaka finally understood that after the business with the aliens in New York, but he was still too tentative. Having a prince who has lived in the world outside Wakanda, who understands it? How could that not be a good thing?”

“The life I lived in the world outside Wakanda wasn’t a prince’s life, Auntie.”

“All the better. That’s exactly why you will be good for T’Challa. My son is a good man, but he has led a sheltered life, and you have not. There is much that you can teach him, much that you can teach each other.”

Erik didn’t especially like the idea of being T’Challa’s token learning opportunity, the underprivileged guy from the hood teaching his royal cousin street smarts or what the fuck ever. He wasn’t here to live out some weird Fresh Prince reboot.

“Not sure you or T’Challa will like what I have to teach him. Because the way I see it, Wakanda’s got a lot to make up for. My ma’s ancestors? They were slaves. While your ancestors had vibranium spoons in their mouths and wanted for nothing, my ancestors were being bought and sold and raped and abused. And Wakanda did _nothing_.”

Ramonda didn’t take offense. Instead, she tilted her head and her lips rose in a small, secret kind of smile.

“We haven’t been so idle as I think you imagine us to have been. The War Dogs don’t only gather intelligence, you know, and many of them have been saying similar things for centuries,” she told him. Her smile turned solemn. “I know you have reason to hate us, Erik. I know we abandoned you in your hour of greatest need. Let us try to make it right. Be a prince of Wakanda, _and_ an American soldier who is descended from slaves. Wakanda and the world have need of both.”

This earnest welcome and acceptance was such a 180-degree shift from her animosity and suspicion in earlier loops that Erik was nearly dizzy with the change. Had this been a possibility all along, if he hadn’t come in swinging, or if he’d genuinely tried to get to know his family? Or had he just hit on the ideal ratio of truth to lies? He tried a little truth to test it out.

“And if I decide I’d rather be king of Wakanda?”

Ramonda accepted the question easily, no fear or worry on her face or in her body language. “Then challenge my son. Or marry him.”

“Wait, what?”

“We aren’t backwards about same-sex relationships in Wakanda,” she said, like _that_ was the problem here.

“Uh, okay, but we’re _cousins_.”

“That’s not so taboo here as it is elsewhere,” said Ramonda with a breezy wave of her hand and a wry smile. “Especially not when it comes to royal marriages.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” muttered Erik, his face going hot, and Ramonda laughed.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to arrange a marriage between the two of you.” Her gaze sharpened, suddenly keen and searching. “Do you truly want to be king though?”

He’d been king enough times by now to know that the question deserved some consideration. The satisfaction, the absolute relief and rightness, that he’d felt that first time he sat on the throne seemed far away now, unreal. In loop after loop, sitting on that throne hadn’t ended in anything but bloodshed.

“I want the power to help Black and brown people all over the world. I used to think I knew how best to do that, but now…I don’t know. Don’t think a war’s gonna do it, not even if it’s backed with Wakanda’s tech and weapons. But I don’t know what the hell else I can do, either as a king or as a prince.”

“You wanted to follow in your father’s footsteps, didn’t you,” said Ramonda.

Her queenly poise turned to alert tension where she sat on the bench beside him, and without looking, the sharpened attention of the two Dora Milaje on guard pricked at him, as if they’d extended their spears. He kept his hands on his knees, palms turned up and open.

“Yeah, for a long time, I did. But it didn’t work out so great for me, or for anyone else.” He thought of the growls in the spirit realm, the heavy weight of attention in the temple. “And I think the big cat goddess disapproved.”

He expected confusion from Ramonda, but instead, she relaxed. “Bast looks after her own, even when they are far from home.” She reached over and patted his arm. “You don’t need to fight any more wars, Erik. If you no longer want to be a soldier, if you don’t want to follow the path of the War Dogs as your father did, you don’t have to. You were an engineer too, were you not?”

Erik had no goddamn idea why she’d keep assuming the best of him, at almost every turn.

“I mean, I’ve got the degrees, yeah, but they weren’t all that relevant to my black ops wetwork.”

His bluntness didn’t faze her.

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t be,” said Ramonda, with a smile that managed to be sad and wry and compassionate all at once. “Still, Shuri would love to show you her lab and talk engineering with you. Perhaps you could pay her a visit next, introduce yourself properly? And while you’re there, maybe get her to leave her lab for lunch in the palace with us.”

“Yes, Auntie,” Erik found himself saying, because Ramonda’s suggestions weren’t really suggestions so much as they were expectations that reality would conform to her clearly stated wishes.

On his way to Shuri’s lab, he found himself imagining the might-have-been where Ramonda had come to get him in Oakland. She’d have been kind to him, he thought. She’d have taken him to see his mother, asked for her blessing to take Erik to Wakanda. And maybe, maybe, when he’d found out about his ma’s cancer, maybe Ramonda could have saved her—

He cut that line of daydreaming off with a quickness. That impossibly kind world didn’t exist, had never existed, and indulging in the fantasy now wouldn’t help him get out of this time loop. And yet, for once, the sweetness of a might-have-been dream lingered more than the bitterness.

* * *

Erik’s welcome to Shuri’s lab was effusive and enthusiastic, more like walking into a party than a lab. The lighting was bright and all the workbenches were gleaming and tidy, but afrobeat music pulsed and pounded, not quite loud enough to cover the deep, barely perceptible thrum of the mines that made up the rest of the mountain.

“Cousin! Welcome to Wakanda, and welcome to the coolest place in Wakanda!” Shuri hugged him, quickly but tightly, and Erik was too busy trying not to stab her or push her away to respond in kind. She didn’t seem to notice or mind. “Do you prefer Erik or N’Jadaka?

“Uh, Erik’s fine. Thanks,” he said, and stepped away from her in case she decided to hug him again. He turned around slowly, taking in the entire lab with all its gleaming machinery and intricate sand tables. “So, this whole lab is all yours?”

“It’s the Wakandan Design Group’s lab, which I lead,” said Shuri, before taking his hand. “Come, come, let me show you everything!”

Shuri gave him a whirlwind tour of the lab, so transparently excited and proud to show off all of the technology that it was hard not to catch some of her enthusiasm. It was only when she tried to take him down into the mine on one of the mag lev carts that Erik balked.

“It is all automated, you see, and even the track lays itself thanks to nanites—are you okay?”

Erik wiped away the clammy sweat that had risen on his forehead. “Yeah. Just, uh, not a fan of dark spaces like that.”

“Fair enough!” said Shuri cheerfully, then she proceeded to subject him to a cheerful interrogation about his education, his graduate work at MIT, what it was like growing up in Oakland, and his impressions of Wakanda so far. In between questions, she poked fun at his style and his slang. Looking at her now, he almost couldn’t believe that this was the same girl who had once roasted him alive under a jet engine. When Erik wasn’t killing her family and starting a war, she instead stuck to gently roasting him with words, and Erik recognized that as the welcome it was.

“Aww, you’re an old man just like T’Challa is. No one says hella anymore!”

“How would you know, you live in Wakanda!”

“I use the internet, I know these things. So what’s up with your horrible nickname, anyway? _Killmonger_?” Shuri wrinkled her nose. “That’s worse than War Machine.”

“It’s, uh, more of a codename, and I’m not sure I should be tell—”

“I’m not a child, and I’ve read your file! I’m aware of what it means to be a Navy SEAL in an active war zone!” protested Shuri, a scowl turning her expression stormy before she waved her hand as if to banish her annoyance. “But never mind, I don’t care about your dark military past, come here, has anyone given you your kimoyo bead bracelet yet? Every Wakandan _must_ have a kimoyo bracelet…” 

Shuri chattered on, but Erik managed to squeeze in a few questions of his own in when she showed him how to work the sand table and its millions of nanites.

“All this stuff, all this technology…you ever want to share it? Not just with Wakandans, but with the rest of the world.”

Shuri shrugged. “Of course I do. But my parents, all of the elders, they say the rest of the world is not yet ready to understand and accept Wakanda’s technologies.”

“Seems to me Wakanda’s been saying that for centuries. What’s it gonna take? Shit, _aliens_ have invaded. More than once, even.”

“Yeah, you’d think that would be the time, wouldn’t you,” said Shuri with a sour expression. “When those aliens attacked New York, Baba got the jets ready to go, and Okoye wanted to send them out, in stealth mode if necessary. She didn’t think America could hold out for very long, and if Earth is invaded, _we_ are invaded. But Baba said wait and wait, and then…” Shuri gestured vaguely. “The Avengers took care of it.”

“Avengers aren’t gonna be taking care of shit now. Half of them are on the run from the law. So what happens next time?” Erik pressed.

“You ask me that as if it were up to me. If it were up to me, Wakanda would be starting to help _make_ the world ready to understand us.”

Now this sounded like something Erik could get behind.

“Yeah? How would you do that?”

“Education! And, you know, all that diplomacy and aid business of course, but the education is the important part. It will go slow, maybe, but it would be a better start than what we have now, which is the occasional aid mission to our neighbors and the rest of Africa, all while we’re still playing pretend.”

“You and my old English teacher would get along,” said Erik, smiling at the thought. “Mrs. C thinks education is the answer too.”

“Isn’t it? We’re no colonizers, we’re not going to go out conquering, forcing our ways on others. If Wakanda is to be accepted and welcomed, we must give away our most valuable assets freely and without force.”

“Not so sure being accepted and welcomed is a worthwhile goal,” he said, and before Shuri could refute that, continued, “You’re gonna redistribute all the vibranium?”

Shuri waved a dismissive hand. “No, not the vibranium! Our _knowledge_. I told you, education is Wakanda’s best way forward.”

“Educating the entire world is a hell of a big ask. There’s millions of people out there who don’t _want_ to learn, who _won’t_ learn if it’s a Black person trying to teach them.”

“You can only teach a willing student,” said Shuri with a shrug. “I don’t think ignorance can ever truly be eradicated. But we can certainly _try_.”

“And that’s enough for you.” Erik shook his head. “What am I saying, you’re like, twelve. World hasn’t beaten you down yet.”

“I’m _seventeen._ ”

“Uh huh, ancient.”

She smacked him on the shoulder. “I know I’m young! That doesn’t mean I’m entirely naive.” Her face went hard, the skin around her eyes going tight in a way that reminded him of the Queen Mother. Yeah, he knew she wasn’t naive. A naive little girl wouldn’t have thrown herself into the fight, wouldn’t have killed him the way she had. “I know the world is unfair, cruel even. I know it will be hard, I know there will be resistance and setbacks. It’s still worth it.”

That was the energy and idealism of youth, Erik supposed, swiftly followed by its self-consciousness too. Shuri let her intensity fall away and shrugged herself back into nonchalant teenage cool. 

“You tell T’Challa all that?” he asked.

“I’ve mentioned it. He and Mother tell me to focus on my work here, that I can’t fix all the world’s problems.”

Any other kid in any other situation, and Erik would have assumed that her family was just trying to placate her. But Shuri was a princess, and Erik bet that no one had ever told her to keep her dreams small.

“Seems like more than enough to keep you busy here.” He gestured around the lab, at the sand table and the waiting models of Black Panther suits and the machinery of the mine, and Shuri grinned and shrugged. “How’s a kid like you end up in charge of the entire Wakandan Design Group anyway?”

“By driving all of my tutors and professors mad, and then getting up to quote unquote _too much mischief_ and being disruptive.”

“You mean you got bored in school,” said Erik, all too familiar with translating that particular assessment on various report cards and on notes teachers sent home with him.

Shuri beamed at him. “I got bored in school,” she confirmed. Her smile faltered, turned sadder and sweeter. “My baba said that if I was going to cause such trouble, I might as well cause _good_ trouble and blah blah, responsibility, using my gifts to help Wakanda instead of just to show up obviously incorrect professors…he wasn’t wrong.”

“I’m glad you’re getting the chance to use your gifts like that,” Erik told her, and he even mostly meant it, even as something too bittersweet to be called jealousy coiled up around his heart. 

“Everyone should have that chance,” she said, as earnest as a goddamned Disney princess. He could almost believe she would do it, she would give that chance to everybody who wanted or needed it.

“Yeah, they should,” he said, and felt the staggering weight of every day of life he had on Shuri. Looking at her bright hope exhausted him. “Some people gotta fight for it though.”

* * *

Erik dutifully coaxed Shuri out of her lab to go back to the Citadel with him for lunch with the Queen Mother, Okoye, W’Kabi and Nakia. After an awkward lunch where everyone but W’Kabi tried their best to avoid bringing up Erik’s dad and his treason, Nakia took charge of Erik, ostensibly to take him to meet T’Challa and Zuri in the Hall of Kings. In actuality, it was a thin excuse for a mostly-friendly interrogation. Any time he spent alone with Nakia always was, during the loops they weren’t actively trying to kill each other, anyway.

If anyone was going to see through him this loop, it was going to be Nakia. Like recognized like after all, and while Nakia definitely didn’t have the kind of blood on her hands that Erik did, she was still a War Dog through and through, a fellow spy who worked best in the shadows. Where they were truly different was in the unshadowed light of day: she walked easily there in a way Erik wasn’t sure he ever could.

She took him to one of the jets, where a pilot was waiting to take them on what Nakia assured Erik was the scenic route to the Hall of Kings.

“And what are we doing in the Hall of Kings, whatever that is?”

Erik knew what it was, but he had his cover to think of. He doubted he was headed there for the same reason as he had in past loops anyway. He wasn’t planning to burn it down this time around, for one thing. Hell, maybe he’d even get the full tour this time.

“It’s a temple, and where Wakanda’s kings and queens are interred. Zuri would like to make his amends to you, N’Jadaka, and to your father’s spirit.”

“Thought T’Challa said there wasn’t any justice he could offer us.”

Nakia smiled, small and almost secretive, but so bright that he had to look away. “He’s good at finding creative solutions, and he always tries to do the right thing. Besides, we believe in restorative justice here in Wakanda.”

“There’s nothing to restore,” said Erik. “My dad’s still dead, and I still spent twenty years abandoned by y’all in America. There’s no going back from any of that.”

“There’s a way forward, hopefully. T’Challa would like you to hear him and Zuri out about it, at least. If that’s alright with you.”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

The jet followed the path of the gleaming and sparkling river below them as it flew north over hills and valleys, where the forbidding mountains of the south gave way to more welcoming hilly grasslands, until they reached the lush green and gold river plains.

“This is the River Tribe’s land we are flying over now,” said Nakia. “My Tribe. The Golden City is to the east, and Warrior Falls to the west.”

Erik spotted small cities dotting the countryside: nothing like the bustling skyscrapers and closely packed neighborhoods of the Golden City, but these weren’t the little hut villages of the Border Tribe either.

“No foreigners ever make it this far in, do they? Looks like you don’t bother with the Potemkin villages here.”

Nakia pointed out one particular cluster of buildings and roads tucked in against the river’s western shore.

“That’s what the rest of the world thinks is our capital city, actually. You’re right though, very few foreigners ever make it this far.”

“Hundreds of years is a long time to be living a lie.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it is,” she said, and frowned down at the beautiful vista spread out under the jet. “How are you liking Wakanda so far?”

“It’s amazing. Everything my dad told me and more.”

“But?”

“Who says there’s a but? It means a lot to me to finally be here.”

Nakia just tilted her head and smiled. “I’m sure it does,” she said with sweet sincerity. Then she added, kind and relentless, “But?”

“But all I can think of are the projects back in Oakland, and the child soldiers in the DRC, and the refugee camps in Sudan.”

“Yes,” said Nakia, nodding. “It is the same for me. I love my home, and I miss it terribly when I am gone. But when I start thinking of all the people outside our borders in need of help—then I cannot stay. I wonder sometimes if some day, I will not be able to return at all.”

“Yeah?” he asked, surprised.

“Some War Dogs don’t. We see there is more need for us out in the world, and maybe we can’t share Wakanda’s gifts yet, but we War Dogs can make a real difference out there and still be within our official remit, so—” Nakia shrugged. “We do something like what your father did. Stay abroad, make a life outside of Wakanda, help whoever we can however we can without compromising Wakanda’s security.”

“It’s not enough.”

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed.

“Whatever you’re doing to help, War Dogs aren’t out there overthrowing oppressive regimes, so what’s the point?”

Nakia snorted. “We’re not the CIA.” Her dark eyes went hunter-focused. “Are you?” she asked, and Erik laughed, like it was a joke. She didn’t join him, and no gentle smile softened her face.

“Oh shit, you’re not joking,” he realized. “Uh, N’Jobu really was my dad, I really am just here to learn more about him and my family.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not CIA too.”

“You’ve seen my file. I was a SEAL, yeah, with JSOC. But I wasn’t _CIA_. I’m not CIA now either. What, do you think I showed up here to start up a CIA-backed coup?”

It probably wouldn’t win him any points with her if he clarified that he’d showed up here to start a good old-fashioned coup, no CIA interference required or requested.

“I think a half-American, half-Wakandan soldier with a reasonable claim to the throne of Wakanda is the CIA’s dream operative. I think there are many people in America who would consider such a man to be the perfect way to acquire Wakanda’s vibranium, even if they think poor, backwards Wakanda does not have much of it.”

The thing was, Nakia wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t wrong about him potentially being the CIA’s dream operative, and she wasn’t wrong about how it would go down. Hell, Everett Ross had all but said as much in other loops, and in those other loops, Ross had assumed that he and Erik could follow the familiar playbook established by decades of imperialist history.

“I’m not gonna lie and say I haven’t thought about the throne, ‘cause I’ve thought about it. A lot. But I’m not here to be the CIA’s puppet, I swear.” This didn’t seem to move Nakia. “I swear on my father’s spirit,” he added, fervent, and then only barely held back a wince.

Nakia’s expressive eyes gave nothing away for once. Erik was trying too hard, she’d know he was trying too hard, and he’d up wasting what was left of this loop under house arrest on suspicion of being a CIA spy.

“Did your father teach you that oath?” asked Nakia. “Never mind, tell me what you did think about the throne, when you thought about it.”

“That if I challenged T’Challa for the throne and won, it wouldn’t be so I could turn Wakanda into a colony,” he said, and Nakia gave a dismissive little twitch of her head.

“I told you, I believe you. I want to know what you _would_ do, not what you wouldn’t. Young men who dream of becoming king do not dream of everything they _wouldn’t_ do.”

“Maybe young men whose fathers fucked up so much _should_ be thinking of what they wouldn’t do. But yeah, alright, I wanted to do what my dad wanted to do,” he said, then shrugged. “At least, that’s what I thought I wanted to do, if I was king.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” said Nakia, now smiling with such warmth that the denial barely stung.

“No, it wouldn’t. But do you have any better ideas? Our people need to be freed, once and for all. Maybe _you_ don’t think of them as our people, but I—”

“I do,” said Nakia, low and fierce. “And I think if we help them, we help everyone. I just don’t want us to turn into conquerors and colonizers to do it. A program of humanitarian aid—”

Erik rolled his eyes and snorted. “Come on. Like all the humanitarian aid the US exports? How much good does that do, spreading democracy? Take it from someone who was ‘spreading democracy’ from behind the barrel of a gun for our ‘American freedoms,’ that’s just a different kind of empire.”

“Some of those aid programs truly have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Wakanda can do even better. Sometimes revolution must be slow and quiet, it must spread and grow from community to community. With the right social programs and humanitarian aid, with education, we can provide resources to those who need it, and to those who are already helping others. That’s the only revolution that is truly sustainable.”

Nakia’s passion lit her up, her eyes gleaming with conviction. Ten years ago, Erik might have believed her. Ten years ago, Erik would have matched her passion. His scars prickled and itched, and reminded him just how far _ten years ago_ was from his strange, suspended _now_.

“That’ll take _decades_. Longer even, probably.”

“Well, yes, it will. But it isn’t as if a violent global revolution would be over quickly either. If there’s one thing I have learned in my time as a War Dog, it is that wars don’t end quickly, or easily. Sometimes I wonder if they end at all.”

A hundred plus loops ago, Erik would have told her it didn’t matter if the wars never ended, so long as the right people were the winners for once. Now he couldn’t quite convince himself that winning like that would be worth the cost. He didn’t know if that was because he was tired, or because he was broken.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Erik. “But I’m not sure I’m built for doing things your way.”

“You don’t have to be,” said Nakia with a shrug. “There are other War Dogs who prefer to do things a little closer to your way. And while it’s not officially sanctioned, it’s not treason either.”

“Yeah? So if I’m a War Dog, and I head over to the DRC to liberate some child soldiers, that’s okay?”

“You are neutralizing a potential future threat to Wakanda,” said Nakia with a straight face.

“Uh huh. And if I go back to America and start killing cops who kill innocent Black folks, that’s okay?”

Now he earned a quelling, somewhat appalled glare. “Well, no, not really, that is murder, and dangerous for a War Dog’s cover besides.” Nakia paused, grimaced. “Though War Dogs have, on occasion, taken such measures, yes.”

“No shit?”

“We take what opportunities we can. I just want us to have more opportunities to help, I want us to have more options than covert operations that do too little to challenge oppressive systems. But I’m not so naive as to think we won’t still need those covert operations.”

“So where’s T’Challa fall? Does he agree with you, or does he still want to do things his dad’s way?”

“Ask him yourself. Though I don’t think he truly knows yet. He’s only been king for a couple of weeks. Do you intend to challenge T’Challa for the throne?”

“Thought we covered this already.”

“No, you only said _if_ you challenged. Is it only an _if_ , or is it a _when_?”

“I don’t know,” he said, then to test her, “A when, maybe.”

To his surprise, Nakia just nodded and said, “I won’t ask you not to challenge him. I only ask that you talk to him first. I think he should know how strongly you feel about Wakanda’s responsibilities and about helping our people all over the world.” Nakia smiled, a small and tired kind of smile. “He’s used to my arguments, I’m not sure he entirely hears them anymore. Maybe he’ll listen to yours.”

* * *

Would T’Challa listen to Erik? Erik realized he had no idea. He’d never given T’Challa much of a chance to talk to him, not really. Mostly he’d just killed him, or been killed by him, and when he hadn’t done that, he’d let T’Challa more or less talk at him instead of actually bothering to have a real conversation. It was probably time to try something different.

Nakia set the jet down in a small clearing in the jungle, beside a calm stretch of river. From past loops, Erik knew it was about a 45-minute trip on foot to the Hall of Kings itself. He nearly set off on his own before he remembered there was no way he should know how to get there. So he let Nakia guide him on the narrow road that led to the temple and tombs, a road almost narrow enough to be called a path, only barely wide enough to admit a hover car.

The sheer cacophony of sound in the jungle always surprised Erik, along with the depth of green that surrounded them.

“The jungle takes some getting used to,” said Nakia, when an especially bloodcurdling hoot from some jungle animal or another made him startle.

“No offense, but I prefer the concrete jungle. Is there a reason the Hall of Kings is way the hell in the heart of the jungle? Just to hide it?”

“I’m certain that was part of the reason.” Nakia stopped walking and stepped off the path into the jungle, then she kneeled to grab a handful of the loam and detritus of the jungle floor. She tilted her palm to show him the mass of rotting leaves and fresh soil and crawling bugs. “But the priests and shamans say it is because the jungle is all about decay, and life. Decay that gives life to so much, and life that all ends in decay.”

She rose to her feet again and brushed the dirt from her hands. Her mouth lifted up in a gentle smile, but her eyes were still so sharp.

“Huh. Guess that makes a kinda sense,” he said.

They walked in silence until they reached the main entrance to the Hall of Kings, where T’Challa was waiting.

“Thank you for bringing him, Nakia.”

“You are welcome. I will see you both back in the Citadel?”

“Yes, we will return in time for dinner, I’m sure,” said T’Challa, then he led Erik inside the cool, dark, and above all _silent_ , interior of the Hall of Kings.

* * *

They’d scarcely taken a few steps inside when T’Challa started talking.

“I know you may not yet be ready to speak of our fathers, and what justice we can offer you for my father’s wrongs against you, but I wanted to let you know what options exist. And Zuri is eager to make things right, as much as he can. If you don’t want to speak to him—”

“How about you show me around first,” suggested Erik, and gestured around the hushed and dark interior of the Hall of Kings. He didn’t want Zuri joining them just yet, making this all about the past. Erik wanted to know what T’Challa thought about the future. “I don’t know much about Wakanda’s religion and what the priests even do.”

“Of course,” said T’Challa, and guided him deeper inside. “I am no priest, but I think I can give you the basics.”

The basics weren’t all that different from what Erik’s own dad had told him as bedtime stories so many years ago, just with a heavier helping of actual history and some explanations of the role of religion in modern Wakandan society, how it was woven into education and medicine and even government. As they walked on towards the Hall of Kings’ shrines to the gods of Wakanda, T’Challa told him about Bast and Sekhmet, Sobek and Hanuman, and their links to Wakanda’s tribes, how their own tribe was linked inextricably to the Great Panther Bast.

T’Challa showed him a rough-hewn, man-sized statue of Bast, its vibranium gone lustrous with age. It wasn’t a particularly pretty statue: the Panther’s ears were crooked, its muzzle off center, and its paws weren’t sculpted in any real detail.

“This is likely the oldest statue of Bast in existence. The priests say Bashenga himself carved it.” T’Challa grinned when he spotted the unimpressed look on Erik’s face. “Yes, it’s not much to look at, I know. Bashenga had many skills, but he was no artist. Still, this is my favorite statue of Bast, specifically because of its imperfections.”

T’Challa rubbed a fond hand over the Panther’s crooked right ear. In the low torchlight of the temple, Erik could almost believe the ugly statue was the real deal, that it would butt its head against T’Challa’s hand and purr.

“So, are you a believer?” asked Erik.

“I wasn’t always. What belief I had was a matter of habit more than faith. But when I first became the Black Panther—I felt it then. The connection to something greater, to my ancestors all the way back to Bashenga, and to the Great Panther herself. I felt—seen, I suppose. And then when I became king, I visited the plane of the ancestors. Difficult not to be a believer, after all that.”

“I’m not so sure feeling seen by a magic cat goddess would be such a great thing,” muttered Erik, uncomfortably reminded of the weight of an immense, inhuman attention, the sense of predatory, purring patience in whatever prison of the spirit realm his father was trapped in. “And I guess it’d depend on what that ancestral plane was like.”

Astral plane Oakland sure as hell wasn’t all that inspiring.

T’Challa turned away from the statue and back towards Erik. His eyes shone in the torchlight, like the gleam of light on dark waters.

“My experience in the ancestral plane actually gave me an idea for seeking some justice for you. Zuri and I have consulted with the elders and the Council. We know that we can’t undo what has been done, but we hope to provide a path towards restorative justice.”

When T’Challa laid out his plan, Erik almost blurted out _but I just did that_. Because T’Challa’s restorative justice suggestion was for Erik to take a trip to the ancestral plane to talk things out with T’Chaka and his dad, and to help his dad’s spirit attain peace.

T’Challa must have mistaken whatever despairing expression was on his face right now for disappointment, or disbelief, because he said, “I know this must seem unbelievable to you. I told you, I was no great believer myself, before I became the Black Panther. But I assure you, the ancestral plane is real, and we can speak to our ancestors there, if Bast grants it.”

Erik was beginning to suspect that it was Bast who had granted him an unwanted ticket to his own personal mobius strip of a trapped life, and he wasn’t all that eager to ask Bast to grant him anything else.

“I just don’t think we can find justice in the past. Your dad, Zuri—they made their choices, and I’m the one who paid for them. And it’s not just me who Wakanda abandoned.”

T’Challa frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that y’all have it easy here in Wakanda. You’re rich and safe, you’ve got tech the rest of the world can barely dream of. Meanwhile your neighbors are dying in epidemics, are starving, are being killed by warlords and dictators. Black folks in America gotta protest and agitate just so white people will even listen to the apparently radical idea that _Black lives matter_. Things were rough for me, sure, but I did okay in the end. I got to the Naval Academy, I got my commission, I went to grad school at MIT. I’m the goddamned success story. So what about everyone else?”

T’Challa nodded, still frowning, but it was a more thoughtful frown now. “Are we still speaking of justice?”

“The justice I want, yeah,” said Erik, and followed it with a low, bitter laugh. “Though I gotta be honest, I’m not so big on _justice_. I’m more of a revenge kinda guy. It’s just that it turns out that getting revenge for all the shit our people have gone through isn’t gonna fix everything.”

“No,” murmured T’Challa, his mouth twisting into a harsh sort of smile. Erik wasn’t used to seeing him look so hard, so much the opposite of a pampered prince. “No, revenge fixes nothing, as I have had cause to recently learn. I think—” T’Challa said slowly, clearly still turning something over in his head, then he continued, “I think that justice comes in openness, in honesty. In helping those who have been harmed. I suppose I only wonder how much Wakanda owes to the world, how much we can give. We cannot fix all the world’s ills. We have ills of our own, for one thing. I love Wakanda, but it isn’t a faultless utopia.”

“It’s still doing better than the rest of the world. You owe more to the world than just shutting it out and hiding from it. Especially when there’s so much you can do to help.”

“Have you been talking to Nakia?” asked T’Challa, in an attempt at lightness.

“This is all me, cuz,” snapped Erik. “And I’m guessing Nakia would tell you to help with humanitarian aid, but charity ain’t gonna be enough. It’s gonna take a fight.”

T’Challa paced the temple floor in a restless prowl, and shook his head with one short, sharp movement.

“I will not have Wakanda wage war against the rest of the world, nor will I have us turn arms dealer. You speak of justice, Erik, and there is no justice in violence.”

“Don’t I goddamn know it. That’s not the kind of fight I mean though. I mean the kind of shit the War Dogs are doing anyway, and politics, and stepping up to help and protect the rest of our brothers and sisters when no one else will. That’s all gonna take a hell of a lot more than charity and educational initiatives.”

“And would you help with the politics?”

Erik laughed again, part bitterness and part surprise. “Me? Nah. I’m more the War Dog type.” He grinned viciously at T’Challa. “You need a regime destabilized, a warlord taken out, a terrorist cell destroyed, I’m your man. The US government invested a lot of money in me for that.”

T’Challa stopped pacing then, and stepped tentatively closer to Erik.

“Yes, Okoye provided me with your military service record. Forgive me if I overstep, cousin: I think you are tired of war.”

Was it so goddamn obvious? Erik didn’t want it to be. He didn’t even know what gave him away.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Erik said with a shrug. “They called me Killmonger, you know? I earned that.” He pushed up his sleeves to reveal his scars. “I earned every single one of these.”

Erik expected T’Challa to recoil, to withdraw his warmth; instead T’Challa reached out light and gentle fingers to trace the upraised scars. Erik’s skin shivered with the sensation of phantom goosebumps that wouldn’t rise on the scarred skin. If Erik took his shirt off, would T’Challa touch the rest of his scars too, or would he finally pull back and turn away, the way he probably should?

“You need not earn any more, if you don’t want to,” said T’Challa, too soft and sincere. “I pledge that as both your kin and your king. Will you speak to our ancestors?”

Erik shook his head. “My pops doesn’t have any answers for me, and I’m not interested in hearingmore of your dad’s excuses.”

“ _More_ of my father’s excuses? Which excuses have you already heard?”

_Shit_.

“The excuses I figure he’ll make, I mean. That it was for the good of Wakanda, that I counted as an outsider and not as a Wakandan, that kinda thing.”

“What if—what if we did it together? I too have some answers to demand of my father, and I will not let him make excuses to you.”

Erik blinked in surprise. “Is that even possible?”

“I don’t see why not. Come, let’s speak to Zuri.”

If there was any way to get T’Challa to believe him about the truth of the time loop he was stuck in, Erik figured a trip to the ancestral plane was it. And maybe T’Challa knowing would be enough to break it, or hell, maybe Erik would give yelling at Bast a try.

“Yeah, okay, sure. Why not. But no matter what heart-to-heart we have on the astral plane, that’s not the kinda justice I’m looking for, T’Challa.”

“I know. And you’re far from the only one who thinks Wakanda must take its proper place in the global community. I had plans to—” T’Challa’s gaze went distant and pensive, then he shook his head. “No matter. I begin to understand that such plans must be expanded, and hastened. Perhaps we move too slowly for the faster world outside our borders. Perhaps we need someone like you, who understands that world, and who can speak for those we’ve abandoned in our isolation.”

“I’m not interested in being your token, or the Wakandan equivalent of a diversity hire. You want me to be the voice for the lost and abandoned? You better get ready to hear me yell, and you better be ready for Wakanda to be dragged out into the real world.”

T’Challa grinned, and held out his hand. “I look forward to it, cousin, and I promise you: you will be heard. But will you journey with me to hear our ancestors first? You say you will find no justice in it, and I accept that. But perhaps you— _we_ —can find some healing.”

* * *

By now, the ritual to enter the ancestral plane was so familiar it was boring. Herbs would be mixed, prayers would be said, and the hot, red sand would take him under. Second verse, same as the first. There were some complications this time though, and Erik dwelled on them as Zuri poured out the dark and bitter psychoactive brew into little bowls.

“What if we don’t end up in the same part of the ancestral plane?” Erik asked Zuri.

If his dad and T’Chaka hadn’t settled their beef yet, then Erik figured he’d be headed right back to the astral ghetto while T’Challa went to the nice, big Wakanda in the sky.

“That is part of why I don’t entirely approve of this plan. If you two had proper training as priests, it would be one thing, but Erik knows nothing of such journeys, and T’Challa, you have only briefly entered the ancestral plane. Had you sufficient training, you could both navigate safely. Without it, I can offer you no guarantees, nor even any guesses.”

T’Challa’s brow furrowed in genuine concern. “If this is too dangerous, tell us, Zuri. I would not harm Erik more while attempting to heal what has torn our family apart.”

“I wouldn’t worry about hurting me,” Erik told him. “C’mon, let’s do this, let’s get it over with.”

“That really isn’t the appropriate frame of mind to approach—” Zuri began, but Erik wasn’t about to waste time with a lecture.

Erik grabbed the bowl of mystical potion and chugged it.

“Erik,” chided T’Challa without much heat, then he grabbed his own bowl of hallucinogenic sludge and drank it down. Before they went under, T’Challa grabbed hold of Erik’s hand, his grip hot and strong. Erik squeezed back on reflex. Maybe they wouldn’t be separated on the ancestral plane after all. “I will see you shortly,” he said, with the full force of his kingly conviction.

“Yeah, sure,” said Erik. He was already slipping under.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, he was back in Oakland, in Apartment 1401. Great.

“So, guessing you haven’t worked things out with T’Chaka,” he said.

A voice he wasn’t expecting asked, “Who are you speaking to?” and Erik whirled to find T’Challa standing by the window. There was no sign of N’Jobu in the rest of the apartment, and the TV was dark and silent.

“I thought—I thought my dad would be here.”

“Where is here?”

“This is where I grew up. My family’s old apartment in Oakland.”

T’Challa moved carefully through it, as if he’d stepped into a museum diorama he was trying not to disturb. He examined everything with avid curiosity, to the point where Erik wondered if this was the first time T’Challa had ever been in a normal-ass person’s apartment outside of Wakanda.

“This is where your dad killed my dad too,” added Erik, and T’Challa’s curiosity turned to solemnity.

“Neither of our fathers are here now, it seems,” T’Challa said.

Erik listened for any otherworldly growl or purr, even tried turning on the TV and picking up the phone, but nothing other than Erik and T’Challa themselves interrupted the total silence of the apartment. Whatever had given even the spirit version of this place some life was gone now; it had turned into a simulacra of a memory, hollow and inert.

“So, this was a bust,” Erik said, but T’Challa shook his head.

“If our fathers aren’t here, then they must be somewhere else. We can find them,” said T’Challa, and walked to the front door. “Is this the way out?”

“Yeah, or it would’ve been the way out in the real world, but I’m not sure—”

Before he could finish, T’Challa opened the door, and instead of there being a dull and worn hallway outside, the door opened onto a savannah’s flat plain, washed pale and gleaming by the lights of a strange aurora that glowed with the vivid violet of the heart-shaped herb, rather than the green of ionization.

“Now that is the plane of the ancestors I know.” T’Challa held out his hand to Erik, and the almost boyish smile on his face made something twist hard and vicious in Erik’s heart.

It couldn’t be that easy, thought Erik. But now that he thought about it, he’d never tried leaving the spirit realm apartment after entering it, and he’d never even seen his dad test the door’s handle. He’d assumed, given the view outside the windows, that it was nothing but ghost Oakland out there. Stupid to make any assumptions about some mysterious afterlife limbo, obviously.

He took T’Challa’s hand and stepped across the threshold with him.

* * *

“Now what? We just walk until we find them?”

This wasn’t how it had worked for him before, but Erik couldn’t tell T’Challa that. Maybe it wasn’t how it had worked before for T’Challa either, because T’Challa looked around with both wariness and wonder. The air was no longer heavy and dense with the threat of a storm; the cloudless sky beyond the aurora clear and full of stars. A sweet breeze swept the plain, and the grasses rustled and sighed. Erik could almost imagine this place was actually alive.

T’Challa pointed, and Erik followed the line of his finger to a few lone trees in the distance, and the shimmer of something that might have been an oasis, or might have been a mirage.

“There,” said T’Challa. “I saw my father’s spirit by the trees, when I was last here.”

It seemed as good a direction as any to try. So they walked.

“This seems like a pretty boring afterlife to me,” said Erik.

T’Challa’s stride was untroubled and unerring as he guided them towards the trees. “I understand there are mysteries about this plane that the living aren’t permitted to know, or even see.”

“Convenient,” muttered Erik.

The sound of the breeze through the grasses shifted to an almost growl, and something bumped against his hip. He whirled and crashed into T’Challa, reaching for a weapon he didn’t have, not that it was likely to do much good against the _panther_ now walking beside him.

“Ah, I see we have a guide now,” T’Challa said with a smile as he steadied Erik.

The panther—the Great Panther?—led them on towards the distant stand of trees, and their strides seemed lengthened, the ground falling away under them as if they were all moving with the panther’s loping, ground-eating run.

When they reached the trees, their fathers were sitting on the ground under the tree’s expansive branches—the tree was a lot bigger than Erik had thought it was—and they were laughing and young. It should have relieved Erik, because if part of the reason he was trapped in a time loop was to see his father’s spirit put to true rest, then surely this was it. But he wasn’t relieved. His hands shook and his eyes burned and he wasn’t feeling anything close to relieved.

“Baba,” called out T’Challa, and the two men turned to look at them. “Uncle. N’Jadaka and I have come to speak with you. Will you hear?”

T’Chaka’s eyes went wide, and abruptly, Erik realized that there was a pretty big problem with this whole set up: T’Chaka could tell T’Challa just what Erik had spent countless time loops doing, and Erik would lose any chance at being welcome in Wakanda. Even if nothing he’d done had ended up being permanent, Erik doubted that anyone would be willing to trust him if they knew how many times he’d killed them.

“How—are you dead, my son?” asked T’Chaka, both he and Erik’s dad rising now. T’Chaka’s eyes were wide in alarm, but his dad didn’t look worried: hope burned away the pain and regret Erik hadn’t realized he’d grown so used to seeing on his dad’s face.

“No, Baba,” T’Challa told T’Chaka. “With Zuri’s help, N’Jadaka and I have come in search of justice, or at the least healing. Do you know who this is, Baba?”

“I know,” said T’Chaka, the words falling heavy like boulders from his lips.

“Then you know how you failed him, the things you took from him. How you failed our family.”

“Yeah, and remember how you murdered my dad?” asked Erik, jerking his chin towards him. “Maybe my dad doesn’t mind so much anymore, but I sure as hell still do.”

Dad winced and made as if to reach for him. “Erik—” he started, but Erik stepped back and shook his head.

“Don’t. I’m glad you busted out of spirit jail, I really am. But I don’t wanna hear about how you and Uncle over there are all good now.”

“I have never truly blamed your uncle for the manner of my death. He acted in defense of Zuri, and he thought me a traitor. And truly, I betrayed more than I thought I had with my actions, and I have had to reckon with that. But when I realized T’Chaka had abandoned you—that is what I could not understand or forgive.”

Erik crossed his arms over his chest. “You seem to have forgiven it just fine now.”

“He has not, actually,” said T’Chaka. He offered Erik a grimacing kind of smile. “And I don’t blame him. We have only taken the first steps down a road that may end in forgiveness.”

“It’s looking to be a very long road, brother,” said Dad.

“Okay, great,” said Erik, and turned to T’Challa. “We’re done here.”

T’Challa raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “Maybe you are, but I’m not. I want to know: why did you abandon him, Baba? He was a child, innocent of his father’s crimes. You could have brought him home to us.”

“I calculated that the risk to Wakanda was too great.”

“What risk could an orphaned child possibly pose?” demanded T’Challa.

“It was not N’Jadaka himself who was dangerous, but the questions his presence could raise. About N’Jobu, about N’Jobu’s ties to Klaue, about N’Jobu’s ideas…I worried for the safety and stability of Wakanda. I knew a good man would not abandon his nephew, but I thought—” T’Chaka sighed, long and shaky, and for a disorienting moment, his image flickered, showing the old man whose shoulders stooped under the weight of years and regrets. “I thought that to be a good king, I had to leave the child. And I was so furious at N’Jobu, at what I thought he had done in working with Klaue…”

T’Chaka trailed off, and lifted his open hands in a gesture somewhere between helpless and beseeching.

“And so my son paid for my sins,” said Dad, and paced away, back and forth, back and forth, like he was still trapped in the apartment.

“It was wrong, Baba,” said T’Challa. “You could have found a way.”

Even now, T’Challa had some faith in his father. Faith that if only his dad had thought of a way to not totally abandon Erik, he’d have done it. Erik knew better.

“No, he couldn’t have. Because he didn’t—still doesn’t, probably—think I’m Wakandan. And fuck everybody who’s not Wakandan, right?”

T’Chaka looked away. Good. At least he felt some shame about it now, when he was face to face with Erik.

“I am—was—king of Wakanda. My duty was only to Wakanda. I am sorry for what that has cost our family.”

No one spoke for what felt like a long time. Erik sure as hell wasn’t going to break the silence. It wasn’t like he had anything to say anyway. Not anything that wasn’t _I told you justice was a lost cause_.

“And what has it cost the world too, I wonder,” murmured T’Challa, as if to himself. Then, “I understand now,” he said. He turned to Erik, and some bright and blazing emotion Erik didn’t recognize was shining in his eyes, lighting him up like a beacon. “You and Nakia were right. And you were right, Erik, that your justice will come elsewhere.” T’Challa turned back to his father and embraced him. “Thank you, Baba, for all that you’ve done for me and for Wakanda. But I am king of Wakanda now, and if I am to be a good king _and_ a good man, then my duty extends beyond our borders.”

Erik’s dad smiled, wide and bright, even as tears fell from his eyes. “Didn’t I tell you that you should get to know your cousin, Erik?”

The real world tugged at some deep part of Erik, some barely perceptible line that connected him to life growing taut. Judging by T’Challa’s wide eyes, he felt it too, and between one breath and the next, T’Challa was gone. Erik’s own time here was running out.

“Is this it? Is this the last loop?”

He had two days left to go, but if he didn’t fuck anything up, if he stayed alive—

“I don’t know,” said Dad.

“Is this the last time I’m gonna see you?”

Again, Dad’s answer was, “I don’t know.”

The line that was hooked deep inside him jerked and Erik gasped. It hurt, the way going without air for too long hurt.

“I’m not ready,” he said.

If this was it, if this was the last time—Erik almost laughed. Even stuck in a loop of practically infinite time, he’d run out of it, he’d wasted too much time yelling at his dad and arguing with him. They should have spent the time talking, exchanging stories, learning more about each other. They should have made up for two decades of stolen time.

His awareness of the ancestral plane flickered, replaced with the torchlit dimness of the temple. Dammit, he wasn’t _ready_.

“Baba, don’t go,” he said, and it was Erik saying it, not the child version of himself left behind in the projects of Oakland: Erik now, Erik with his scars and his bloody hands and his pain and his rage.

“But it is you who are going, my son.” Erik tried for one last embrace. They could barely hold onto each other now, neither of them quite solid to the other. “Don’t worry. I will be waiting here for you, and when you return, decades from now I hope, you can tell me how you and T’Challa together changed Wakanda for the better. How you changed the _world_ for the better.” Dad kissed Erik’s head, and rocked him a little, like he had when Erik was small. “Your mother will be so proud of you.”

“For what? Tell me, what would she—”

But too late, he was already being reeled back to the land of the living, and the only words his dad threw after him were _I love you_.

* * *

He came to on the temple floor with tears on his face and his pulse pounding, like each beat of his heart battered blood painfully against every inch of his skin. His body felt heavy, like a thing he was wearing, and for a few breaths, just breathing seemed like a disconcertingly manual action, rather than something his body did automatically.

“Here, drink this,” said Zuri, lifting him up to take a sip of cool, sweet liquid. “You two pushed it nearly too far. I hope it was worth it.”

“It was,” came T’Challa’s voice.

“Yeah, it was,” agreed Erik, and sat up on his own. The room spun and wavered around him for a long moment before his light-headedness passed, leaving a hungover kind of wooziness behind.

“So I take it you found your fathers on the ancestral plane?”

“Yes, we found them,” said T’Challa. “With some help from the Great Panther.”

He looked like he was feeling a hell of a lot better than Erik was. He was still practically glowing with the light of whatever epiphany he’d reached, even if his eyes were bright with tears too. 

“Were they—” Zuri swallowed whatever question he was about to ask and closed his eyes as if in pain. “Was N’Jobu at peace?”

“He’s getting there, maybe,” Erik said.

“Our fathers still have much to discuss, if they are to forgive each other,” added T’Challa.

“They will have time,” said Zuri. He levered himself up with his staff, and offered T’Challa and Erik a hand up in turn.

Zuri’s grip was strong and sure, but he looked so much older to Erik’s eyes now: where his father’s and T’Chaka’s spirits had taken the forms of their younger, stronger selves, Zuri still carried the weight of years. The slump of his shoulders and the drooping of his eyes gave away his exhaustion and his sorrow, and worry carved deep lines into his forehead. Zuri would never be Uncle James to Erik ever again. Looking at him now, all of Erik’s anger had dropped away from that truth, leaving behind nothing but a bitter and tired kind of sadness. Maybe killing Zuri over and over again had provided some therapeutic effect too, spending the worst of his fury.

“So what next, my king and my prince?”

“Justice,” said T’Challa. “And not just for Erik, but for everyone left behind while Wakanda has hidden from the world. I won’t be the same kind of king my father was.”

* * *

T’Challa wanted to get started right away: to start drafting up plans and policies, to call council meetings, to set up meetings with priests and priestesses and War Dogs and Dora Milaje and the Border Guard. The second they got back to the palace, T’Challa was ready to hit the ground running. And he wanted Erik at his side.

“Who better than you to help Wakanda enter the global community? You understand the world outside these borders better even than the War Dogs do. You can be a sort of liaison for Wakanda, and an advocate for those we have abandoned and ignored for too long.”

It was simultaneously more than he thought T’Challa would ever offer him, and not enough.

“How long?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How long before you do the big reveal?”

“At least a month, I imagine. Though admittedly that would be considered unseemly haste. Likely it will be closer to three months, to provide enough time for the Tribes to make their concerns and thoughts known to their Council representatives.”

So okay. Three months. That wasn’t so bad. He’d kind of thought T’Challa might put it all off with some interminable timeline full of committee meetings and polls and speeches, until the months turned to years, and another, more cataclysmic alien invasion or some other fresh, fucked up planet-wide disaster forced Wakanda’s hand.

Three months might as well have been three hundred years though. If this loop didn’t end, the likelihood of Erik seeing either time was exactly the same. And if this loop did end—

If this loop did end, Erik would have to choose: was he going to keep trying things his way? Or was he going to add his voice to Nakia’s, to Shuri’s, to T’Challa’s, and hope that together all of them could use Wakanda’s gifts to free and lift up their people?

“Erik? Will you help? If you don’t want to, if you have responsibilities elsewhere still, I understand—”

“No, I—just, can you give me a couple days to wrap my head around all this? To—to see more of Wakanda? I don’t need the royal tour, I don’t want history and econ lessons, I just want—I just wanna wander around, I guess. I wanna see everything.”

Better to spend the remaining two days of the loop doing that instead of building sand castles that the loop would only wash away. If he couldn’t keep any of this, if none of it mattered, then he might as well leave things the way they were now: the first fragile hope of a new beginning. It would hurt less to lose.

“Of course,” T’Challa said. “Take all the time you need.” His brow furrowed in either thought or concern, and he seemed like he was about to say something else, but instead, he twisted and tapped at a couple of his kimoyo beads. “Here, I’ve assigned a hover bike to you, take it wherever you wish. And if you find you want company…call me. I will join you.”

“You’re king, I feel like you’ve got more important shit to do than sightsee with me.”

T’Challa grimaced. “Probably so. But it would be a gift to share Wakanda with you, N’Jadaka.”

“Erik. Call me Erik, please. It’s—I like my Wakandan name just fine, but I’m not used to it.”

“Erik, then.”

After a split second of hesitation, T’Challa hugged Erik. There was no pretense of bro backslapping. T’Challa hugged with just as much sincerity as he did everything else. Erik felt stiff and brittle in comparison as he returned the hug, and it was him who drew away first.

“Got any suggestions on where I should start?”

“Work your away around the country, I suppose. If you start from the border in the east and go north, you can see the jungles, then go further north to the desert, and on to the southern shore of Lake Kivu. The sunset over the lake is one of the loveliest sights in Wakanda.”

Sunset over Lake Kivu. Alright, why not.

* * *

The next day, before he headed out on his hover bike tour of Wakanda, he stopped by the Citadel’s temple. At just past dawn, both the palace and the temple were quiet, the Citadel complex not yet wholly awake. Only the birdsong filtering in from outside broke the dawn’s hush.

In the Citadel’s halls, Erik passed a handful of people about to start early shifts, and in his Wakandan-style clothes with a kimoyo bracelet on his wrist, he blended in with them, just another Wakandan getting an early start to the day. His presence didn’t merit more than quick smiles and nods, which he returned, and it almost felt like he was getting away with something. For once, he wasn’t: he belonged here, and he wasn’t even sneaking into the temple. His kimoyo bracelet granted him access, and the only reason he stepped softly on the worn stone floors was out of an old, ingrained certainty that ancient holy spaces demanded quiet.

At this hour, Bast’s temple was dimly lit, the sun not yet at the right angle to stream in through the high windows. Erik didn’t even have to call out with an unanswered _hello_ to know he was alone in here: he just knew. Erik’s own presence was the only thing that disturbed the temple’s quiet. So it wasn’t the possibility of someone else being there that made Erik wait at the threshold of the temple for a long moment. He eyed the statue of Bast from across the temple, waiting to feel some sense of being watched, or seen, listening for some otherworldly growl. It didn’t come, the statue remained a statue, and Erik’s stomach sank with some confusing mix of disappointment and relief.

He’d come here to say his piece, to try one more crazy thing in a long, looping line of crazy things. He headed straight for the huge statue of Bast, front and center in the temple, and stood in front of it. Maybe he should have knelt, but even if Bast seemed to be taking a personal interest in Erik, he was no believer. What he was about to do wasn’t prayer. It was its own kind of dumb as hell, yeah, but it wasn’t prayer.

“So I’m guessing you’re the reason I’m stuck in a time loop,” said Erik, then flinched at how loud his voice sounded in the hushed and empty temple.

He didn’t know what he expected, here. This statue was probably just a statue, and talking to it was probably about as useful as talking to a rock, and as likely to get a response. But all those times in the ancestral plane, he’d felt and heard something, some presence that had controlled that TV in astral Oakland, some source of those otherworldly growls. Something had guided him and T’Challa to their parents in the ancestral plane. At this point, divine intervention didn’t seem so much crazier than any other possible reason for Erik’s situation.

He tried again, this time more quietly. “I don’t know what you want me to _do_. I don’t know what it will take to finish this. So I’m asking: what the fuck do you want? Tell me what I can do to end this. Because I’m _trying_ , and I’ve been at this for I don’t even wanna know how long, and I still must not be getting it.”

Erik stood tall and waited. There was no answer. Of course there wasn’t. Statues didn’t talk, and neither did cats. Maybe gods didn’t either. Or maybe they couldn’t talk here.

“Right,” he said with a sigh. “Okay, good talk. See you in a couple days, maybe.”

* * *

The palace was just starting to come fully awake as Erik was leaving, the halls slowly filling with the people who kept the palace and country running. Soon the day’s work would begin in earnest, but Erik planned to be gone by then. A couple commands to his kimoyo bracelet, and a hover bike was waiting for him in the Citadel’s courtyard. Okoye waited there too, in the Dora version of parade rest.

“My prince,” she greeted him. The two words weren’t quite welcoming, but they weren’t entirely begrudging or chilly either.

“General.”

“I understand you wish to take a little tour of Wakanda on your own.”

“Yeah. Nothing special. Just—my dad always wanted me to get to know Wakanda. Not sure I can do that with the full royal tour, if I even wanted one.” An unwelcome possibility occurred to him. “You gonna tell me it’s not safe? Or do you still not trust me enough to give me free rein of the country?”

Okoye sighed, and relaxed from her parade rest. “It’s safe enough. I imagine you can take care of yourself, Lieutenant Commander Stevens, but the Dora Milaje are charged with the safety of the royal family. As for trust…the King and Queen Mother have welcomed you. Nakia is 80% certain you are not a CIA plant. That will have to be enough trust to build on. I will still ask you to please check in twice a day. And to have some discretion in what you tell anybody you meet.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as if to gauge his sincerity, and seemingly satisfied, she nodded. “Now, let me show you to ride this thing without killing yourself. I don’t care if you’re a Navy SEAL, I know for a fact you’ve never ridden a flying motorcycle, and I will not have you dead of a tragic hover bike accident.”

Erik laughed, and to his surprise, it wasn’t an entirely hopeless laugh. “Can’t say I have, no. T’Challa and Shuri said they’re pretty easy to get the hang of though.”

“They _would_ ,” muttered Okoye darkly. “They are programmed not to ascend above a certain altitude, but you must still take care…” 

* * *

Only once Okoye was satisfied he wouldn’t immediately crash the thing did she let him go, and within half an hour, Erik was zooming through a verdant mountain pass towards the hills and valleys and steppes of the Border Tribe lands. He avoided the scattered Border villages and their playacting at a harder life; he didn’t think they’d teach him anything about Wakanda that he didn’t already know. Erik kept to the countryside instead, flying past a few scattered herds of goats and cattle. Their herders waved at him cheerfully, and Erik almost swerved for cover, before he remembered: he belonged here. He waved back.

Mid-morning, he brought the hover bike down on a hill to pull out a late breakfast from his light pack, and to take in the view of a sedate herd of white rhinos grazing placidly in the little valley below him. The world outside Wakanda thought they’d all but died out, but here was a herd of them, safe from poachers and hunters. Would they stay that way, if Wakanda let go of its secrets and opened its borders?

He left the rhinos behind and got back on the hover bike to head north towards the Merchant Tribe’s desert. He passed over verdant jungles on the way; the trees grew so thickly there was no way he was getting a hover bike through them, but he dipped down low enough to hear the melodious cacophony of the forests: birdsong and the hooting of monkeys and the humming buzz of insects. When he cleared the jungles, he hit open land, rolling hills and fields that gave way to the scrub of the desert, where Erik wasn’t the only person zooming around on a hover bike, especially once he got closer to the oases that served as the centers of the Merchant Tribe’s towns.

He stopped for lunch in one of them, and followed his nav bead’s directions to the town’s communal kitchen, which was bustling with a late lunch rush. The food on offer was exponentially better than anything Erik had ever eaten in a cafeteria or mess hall: rich and spicy stews, tender grilled meats, flatbreads still warm from the oven, an array of fresh fruits. No one went hungry in Wakanda, he had learned; for Wakandans, food was as basic a right as the air they breathed, and just as free.

His ma, Erik abruptly remembered, had thought the Panthers’ free breakfast program could save the entire world, if it got big enough. Erik had been too young to understand then: _how’s breakfast gonna save the world, Ma?_ She’d smiled and pulled him against her hip for a quick hug. _It’s about taking care of people so they got one less thing to worry about, so they know no matter what, they’re never gonna go hungry._ Here was one part of his mother’s dream made true in Wakanda. If they could expand it to their neighbors, then to all of Africa, then to the rest of the world—that was exactly the kind of thing Nakia had been talking about, probably, when she talked about international aid.

Breakfast had been a long time ago, so Erik piled his plate high with food, hunger roaring to urgent life in his stomach as if called into existence just by the aroma of meat and spices. When Erik sat down with his food, a couple men and women around his age joined him at the same table.

“Let me guess,” said one of the men, with a smile whose wrinkles interrupted the elegant tattooed lines on his face. “You just got back from a long-term War Dog assignment, and you’re doing the old homesick for Wakanda tour.”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I am,” Erik said. “How’d you know?”

The woman with almost waist-length twists brushed her hair elegantly over her shoulder and said, “It’s a very distinct vibe.”

Erik raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

She nodded seriously, kind mischief lighting up her tawny eyes. “Definitely. It’s the whole looking overwhelmingly grateful and sad and happy all at once thing. Like, you’re going to take one bite of that stew and almost cry, and not because it’s too spicy.”

“Don’t be mean, Aya!” said the plump woman sitting next to her.

“I’m not being mean! I am very pleased you have returned home safely, War Dog—” She widened her eyes at him and waited.

“N’Jadaka.”

“War Dog N’Jadaka. I’m just saying, I can spot a War Dog back from assignment from two kilometers away. You all look like it breaks your heart to be back in Wakanda, but like you can’t stand to leave either.”

Everyone fell silent then, bending their heads to eat or looking away from Aya and her truth bomb. She grimaced apologetically at him and turned her attention to her food.

“It was a long assignment, I guess,” said Erik slowly. “But yeah. Yeah, it’s exactly like that. Sometimes, out there, it feels like Wakanda isn’t even real. I’m trying to remind myself that it is, remember what I love about it.”

More like learn what he loved about it at all. Half-lie or not, his answer passed muster with the group, and they all smiled at him.

“Where are you headed to next?” asked the man with the tattoos.

“Lake Kivu.”

“I know the best campsite along the shore, very beautiful, nice and private. Here,” said the woman sitting at the end of the bench. She spent a few seconds keying something into her kimoyo beads, then with a flick of her finger, sent it over to Erik’s kimoyo bracelet: a little holographic map, detailing a route from here to the campsite.

One of the others scoffed. “A campsite on an empty beach? No, no, no, if the man is back from some grim War Dog assignment, he doesn’t need to brood out at a stunning vista, he needs _people_ , he needs _culture_. The roving art show is over in Central Tenere this week, you’ve _got_ to go see it—”

He lingered over the rest of his meal with them, and it felt a little like he was back at MIT, just hanging out with his fellow grad students: that same sense of belonging and not-belonging, the comfort of a borrowed normalcy. This wasn’t Erik’s life, but for the space of this one meal, it felt like it could be. If he had grown up here, it could have been his life. He could have been like this group of carefree, friendly twenty and thirty-somethings who’d never had to fight for anything, who’d grown up safe and free and valued.

Too late for it now, though. There weren’t enough time loops in even this pocket of infinity to get Erik to that lost version of himself. But it was nice to pretend, for a little while.

* * *

He left the oasis village with his nav bead full of suggestions on where to go next. With hours to go until his planned stop for sunset at Lake Kivu, Erik swung by Central Tenere to see the recommended roving art show. It was visible even from the air: the art show took over the desert town’s central plaza in a riot of color and music that reached Erik’s hover bike even before he began his bike’s descent into the city.

Art wasn’t Erik’s thing, but it was easy to get caught up in the bold paintings and intricately woven, brightly colored fabrics and tapestries on display. The sculptures alone, if that was what they could be called, were worth this detour: rather than any traditional kind of sculpture hewn from rock or metal, the sculptures were like Shuri’s sand table. Millions of little beads and balls of vibranium flowed from shape to shape, or hovered in perfect, still suspension, frozen and caught in forms Erik couldn’t recognize.

When one such sculpture resolved into a horned figure that was almost familiar, Erik startled. For a second, it looked just like the mask he’d taken from the museum in London, back before he’d ended up in his own personal Groundhog Days. This art show was no museum though; it was the opposite of that sterile, lifeless display of stolen treasures, and the way the sculpture’s horns flowed into the shape of a bird in flight proved that everything here was still vital and thriving, ready to change and evolve.

He moved to another sculpture, or maybe it was more accurate to call it an installation: thousands of vibranium sand table beads hovered in mid-air, unsupported, in a shape and structure as defined by its negative spaces as it was by the actual beads.

“You like it?” asked a woman who joined him while he stared at the floating beads. She was draped almost head to toe in pale, flowing robes, in the way of desert nomads all across Africa, though her face was bare.

“Yeah, I like it,” Erik told her. “Not sure what it means, but I like it.”

“Its meaning will only come clear after some time, I guess. As the power source runs down and the electromagnetic field weakens, the beads will drop, one by one. Stasis, no matter how beautiful, cannot be preserved forever.”

“Right, entropy. I get it.”

Not the most exciting artistic statement, entropy was just a fact of the universe, but the presentation was interesting.

The woman—the artist, maybe?—shrugged. “Hm, maybe. And maybe the way the beads fall will form something even more interesting and beautiful.”

“Another political piece, eh, Funeka?” called out a passerby, and Funeka didn’t answer the cheerful taunt, her expression remaining neutral, her attention still fixed on Erik.

“Or they’ll just make a mess and destroy things,” said Erik.

“Either way, it will be a change. And you know, no one realizes the piece is interactive.” She reached out to nudge a few beads here, a few there, so that when the power level dipped again, they dropped to land perfectly in empty spaces below, or on top of already fallen beads. “We can direct the change, instead of waiting for the inevitable, or resigning ourselves to disaster.”

Not just a piece about the inevitability of entropy then. Erik didn’t need an art degree to get why this piece could be considered political. 

“I’m sorry I can’t stick around to see what it’ll look like,” he told her.

Funeka smiled at him. “It’s a roving art show. You’ll find it again.”

* * *

The campsite Erik had been given directions to was as beautiful and secluded as promised. The lush tropical rainforest that surrounded the lake gave way to a sandy beach where clear azure water lapped gently at the shore, and a wide trail led into the rainforest in one direction, and hugged the lake’s coastline in the other. Maybe Erik would follow the trail in the morning, see where it led.

He set up camp quick, nothing fancy: just a sleeping bag in a little clearing by the lakeshore where a small, three-walled reed hut stood, equipped with a few basics for hikers and travelers. Someone had left a couple books in a waterproof bag, and there were a few handwoven blankets tucked away in a small cupboard. When he stepped inside, his kimoyo bracelet beamed up a welcome message at him, along with a little map of the surrounding area, hiking trail included. He stared at the words longer than the short message warranted: _all of Wakanda belongs to all Wakandans! Enjoy Lake Kivu, and please leave the campsite as you found it_.

_All Wakandans_. That included him, now. All day, he’d been accepted as a Wakandan by everyone he’d met. This whole loop, he’d been accepted, welcomed even. He’d even learned that he wasn’t alone in thinking Wakanda had to stop hiding, wasn’t alone in wanting Wakanda to help other Black people all around the world. He wasn’t alone, period. Not if he didn’t want to be.

Did he _want_ to be alone? Or had he just gotten used to it? A long time ago, he’d told T’Challa that the world had taken everything he’d ever loved from him. He’d tried to get even by taking back, by racking up a tally of the debts he’d called in that he wore on his skin. He’d used people to get himself here: Linda and Limbani and Klaue and W’Kabi, and even Mrs. C. Maybe it was time to stop taking and using. Maybe he could try asking, instead. He had nothing left to lose, after all.

He called T’Challa. “Hey. So…the sunset over Lake Kivu’s shaping up to be a pretty good one. Wanna join me?”

“Of course,” said T’Challa immediately. “I’ll be there shortly.”

As the sun drew closer to the horizon, Erik went down to the lake’s sandy shore where waves lapped slowly against the gentle slope of sand. He took off his boots, and when the water sloshed pleasantly cool against his feet, he took most everything else off too, and waded into the pure blue water. His toes sank into thick, cold sand and slid on smooth pebbles, but the water cradled him. When he came back up from a dive, he tasted the lake on his lips, the water that peculiar mix of mineral and sweetly clean that Erik had only ever tasted here in Wakanda, where the vibranium made its way into even the water. So much easy, careless wealth, a bounty of it baked into the clay and soil, pooling in the lakes and flowing in the rivers.

He stayed in the water until the setting sun turned the blue of the lake into molten gold, and if he stayed very still, the water went calm and clear, turning it into a faithful mirror to the sun and sky above it.

The sun had just reached the horizon of sky and water when Erik heard the hum of the royal Talon jet. He expected T’Challa to stay on the shore, but when Erik looked back, T’Challa was taking off his tunic, then his sandals and his pants, until he was down to just his underwear. The sight was bafflingly familiar, and Erik wasn’t sure—of course. How many times had Erik challenged T’Challa at Warrior Falls, both of them stripped down and armed?

T’Challa wasn’t armed now as he waded into the water until he reached Erik.

“You were right,” said T’Challa, nodding towards the western horizon. “We are in for a magnificent sunset this evening.”

“My dad always said Wakanda has the most beautiful sunsets.”

As they watched the sun sink down into the water, Erik had to agree with his dad. The sunset’s light was rich and gilded, the sky around it burning in shades of amber and peach. A cool breeze blew over the water of the lake, cooling the last light of the setting sun’s heat on his face. When was the last time he really looked at the sunset, Erik wondered. Probably when he was dying that first time. It had been beautiful then, but dark, his body already shutting down and his eyes failing. Now he could see and feel the full blaze of it.

“Will you come back home tonight, Erik?”

_Home_. T’Challa said it so easily.

“Is that what the palace is?” asked Erik.

“If you want it to be. You need only ask.”

Erik turned away and headed back towards the shore.

“You sure about that?” He kept his scarred and branded back to T’Challa, not sure he wanted to see the look on T’Challa’s face yet. “I’ve killed a lot of people to get here. Done a lot of awful shit. Here on the continent, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. Maybe I’m not the voice you want talking for all the people Wakanda’s left behind.”

“You don’t need to be the only voice. There will be others,” said T’Challa, and he sounded so calm and certain. Erik heard him move through the water until he was at Erik’s side, T’Challa’s hand on Erik’s shoulder turning Erik to face him. “Ask, Erik. We will not cast you out. _I_ will not cast you out.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re family. Because you deserve to come home. And—and, I must admit, because I want to. That’s all. Because I want you here.”

What would it matter, if Erik said yes? This would all happen again, or it wouldn’t, but either way, this moment in time, these past three days, they might as well have never existed. He’d never be able to keep them. All he could do was have them for now. Which wasn’t so different from any other good thing he’d ever managed to get. And maybe it was enough, maybe this time the loop would snap and unravel, maybe—

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s go—” He choked on the word, wiped away the wetness on his face that wasn’t all lake water. “Home. Let’s go home.”


	4. Chapter 4

They returned to the Golden City and the Citadel together, and as they flew over the city, golden in truth now that night had fallen and it sparkled and glowed with its thousands of lights, Erik tested the idea out: _home. This is home_. Not another foster home, not a dorm, not a base of operations or a rented apartment or a safe house, but home.

T’Challa was going on about how Erik didn’t have to live in the Citadel if he didn’t want to, he could get an apartment in the city, or even in one of the more rural villages, wherever he wanted...Erik only half paid attention.

If he was going to do this, if he was going to make Wakanda home and fight to hold it accountable to the Black folks it had abandoned and the world it had shut out, then he was going to go all in. He was going to end this fucking time loop.

“Erik? Do you have a preference? There are suites available in the Citadel, and your father’s old rooms are still—”

“Citadel’s fine,” he said absently.

He had one more day before the loop probably reset again. And he knew who—or what—was probably the cause of it by now. If the big cat in the sky wasn’t going to listen to Erik making some polite demands in a temple, Erik had to try other options.

* * *

At breakfast on the fourth day, Ramonda steamrollered over all of Erik’s plans.

“We must present you to the Tribes, Erik. A lost prince, returned to us? Though the circumstances were terrible, it is an occasion worthy of celebration.”

“Oh, uh, that’s not necessary, really. We can just do, like, a press release maybe—”

He cast a desperate look over at T’Challa, who hastily started sipping his tea. Shuri was no help either; like every other goddamn teenager on the planet who spent family meals ostentatiously not paying attention, she was messing around with the equivalent of her phone, her kimoyo beads.

“A press release!” exclaimed Ramonda, shaking her head. “I think not.” She reached across the table to clasp Erik’s forearm, heedless of the tattooed scars. “You are not a dirty secret we are admitting to, nor a tragic news event. You are a welcome addition to this family, to this Tribe, and to this nation, and you will be celebrated as such, just as we have celebrated every prince of our people.”

So, okay, that was basically a fulfillment of his sad childhood dreams or whatever, and any other time, Erik would’ve been embarrassingly emotional about it. Right now, it was just hella inconvenient.

“Thanks, Auntie,” he gritted out. “That means a lot.”

Shuri finally looked up from her kimoyo bracelet. “Yeah, being royalty’s great, isn’t it? So many exciting official functions and parties,” she said with cheerful sarcasm.

“Don’t worry,” said T’Challa. “It’s not happening today. It will take some time to plan such a party.”

Ramonda hummed in agreement. “And we will need to adapt some of the ceremonies...would you be amenable to Zuri helping? It’s understandable if you would prefer otherwise, another priest or priestess of Bast can—.”

“Zuri’s fine, ma’am,” he said, earning a relieved smile from Ramonda.

“Excellent. You will of course have to meet the Panther Tribe elders today—”

Shuri’s eyes went wide, and she got up and grabbed a cup of tea. “Sooo many meetings for the Wakandan Design Group today, I have to get going. See you later, cousin!” She pecked her mother on the cheek, waved at Erik, and was out of dining room in seconds.

“I have video conferences with the UN and the Hague today regarding Zemo, otherwise of course I would join you,” said T’Challa, draining the last of his tea before beating a hasty retreat of his own.

His cousins immediately abandoning him didn’t bode well for the day’s prospects, thought Erik. Neither did the way Ramonda was narrowing her eyes at her retreating children’s backs. She was all smiles with him though.

“Just us today then!”

Erik smiled back, and hoped he didn’t look crazed. “Looking forward to it, ma’am.”

* * *

Erik ended up being proven right about the day’s prospects. It was like he had to make up for all the boring and tedious family visits with older relatives that he’d managed to avoid as a kid by virtue of being an orphan, all in one day. As late morning stretched into afternoon, on into late afternoon, with no sign of the visits stopping, Erik started to get desperate. This wasn’t part of the plan, and it almost certainly wouldn’t _help_ the plan if he got himself out of this situation by doing something violent and/or abrupt. It was almost enough to make him miss the loops that had ended in him getting killed by assorted angry Wakandans.

In between a visit from his grandfather’s cousin’s wife—a Dora Milaje in his grandfather Azurri’s time, Ramonda informed him—and the man who had taught both T’Chaka and T’Challa how to channel the Black Panther’s gifts, Erik took Ramonda aside and said, “I was hoping to go see Zuri today. There’s, uh, still stuff I wanted to ask him about my mom…”

“Your mother? I didn’t know Zuri knew her as well.”

“Yeah, he did, before she went to prison. He and my dad had been working on a plan to bust her out, actually.” Erik wasn’t the only one who’d been abandoned by T’Chaka and Zuri. The reminder burned, and he swallowed down the bitter bile that wanted to come out. Ramonda wasn’t the right target for it. “After I went into the system, it wasn’t easy for me to get a hold of her, so I was wondering if Zuri had gotten in touch with her before she passed, or if he knew anything.”

It both was and wasn’t a pretext. Erik _did_ want to know more about his mom, he just doubted Zuri would have much to tell him. Talking about his mom would give him the opening he needed though. Whether that kind of manipulation was really any better than just straight up threatening Zuri, Erik wasn’t sure. Erik supposed he only really knew how to play dirty, one way or another.

“He has duties in the temples for much of the day, but here,” said Ramonda, taking his hand and tapping one of her kimoyo beads to his. “Send him a message, I know he’ll be happy to speak with you.”

“Not sure happy’s the word,” said Erik, and Ramonda’s mouth twisted in a knowing smile that matched at least some of Erik’s own bitterness.

“Perhaps not. He’s wronged you terribly, and he owes you a great deal. So. He _will_ speak with you,” she said, and made it sound like an order.

Zuri must have heard it that way too, because he definitely answered Erik with a quickness, writing that he’d be back in the Citadel after dinner, and that Erik could meet him in the temple there. Erik would be cutting it close with his plan, but it would have to do. And maybe it would even work out better this way.

* * *

Erik only barely got to the temple after a long dinner full of storytelling— _you must catch up on the stories of our ancestors, N’Jadaka!_ —and only managed to get away by pleading a meeting with Zuri, who was waiting for him in the temple as promised. He wasn’t idle; he was puttering around, tidying this or that, though the temple was spotless. Wakanda probably had robots for that kinda thing. So Zuri was nervous. Good. That would help Erik get what he wanted, hopefully.

“Hey,” Erik called out, and Zuri turned to greet him with an uncertain smile, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to smile at Erik anymore.

“Wakanda has welcomed you, Erik. It looks good on you. I’m glad.”

“I wasn’t sure it would, if I’m being honest. I’m glad too.”

“Come, sit,” said Zuri, gesturing Erik towards a bench near the altar. They both sat, and Zuri asked, “What did you want to meet with me about?”

Time to give it a shot. And hell, if this didn’t work, there were always threats.

“I wanted to talk to you about my ma…you know what happened to her?”

Zuri bowed his head. “I understand she passed away in prison. I’m sorry, Erik.”

“Yeah, turns out medical care in women’s prisons isn’t the greatest. Cervical cancer.”

“I failed her too, and for that I am more sorry than I can say. Her imprisonment truly was unjust, and had it not been for your father’s plans…”

Erik didn’t need Zuri to tell him that. His mom had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time—namely, she’d been caught trying to take back what was rightfully theirs from some museum that had stolen their people’s treasures just like their people themselves had been stolen—and the machinery of the so-called “justice” system had rolled right over her, charging and convicting her with robbery and a half-dozen “gang-related” offenses that didn’t merit the name.

“She mighta got caught anyway,” said Erik. She hadn’t exactly had Erik’s training and resources. “Listen, I wanted to know if you knew anything else about her. I only had my dad’s journals to go on.”

Zuri sighed and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I could tell you any more than what you already know. I didn’t know Tamara that well. My mission was focused on N’Jobu, and once I confirmed she wasn’t a threat to him or to Wakanda, I didn’t spend much time with her.”

“Yeah, I figured. I had to ask though. I’ve just been thinking of her a lot now that I’m finally here in Wakanda, you know? Like, this is my family now, but she was my family too. And now I’m all that’s left of her.”

“Accepting and joining your family here, building a life here, they aren’t rejections of her, Erik. You still carry the name she gave you, don’t you?”

Erik nodded. “Doesn’t feel like enough, is all. Is there—do you think—is there any way I could talk to my mom? The way I talked to my dad, I mean, in the ancestral plane.”

Zuri didn’t seem surprised by the question, only sorry.

“Your mother was not Wakandan…”

“So, what, the afterlife is just for Wakandans?” demanded Erik.

“It’s not quite the afterlife. Or not only the afterlife. But yes, that particular manifestation of a metaphysical space is tied to Wakanda and the Wakandan people.”

Erik wasn’t even going to touch the actual, real world physics of that, not when he was stuck in a time loop.

“If we can get to that manifestation of metaphysical space or whatever, we should be able to get to others.”

Zuri frowned. “Perhaps. It is, I believe, a question for philosophers and priests and shamans to spend many years puzzling over.”

“How about you help me try a practical test, right here, right now.”

“Absolutely not,” said Zuri immediately, and shook his head emphatically as he rose to pace the temple, his staff clomping forcefully onto the floor with each step.

“C’mon, who better to try it than the guy who’s half-Wakandan, half-American?”

Erik cast a desperate glance at his wristwatch: 9:34 PM. The loop didn’t reset at exactly midnight, given he’d stayed up later than that on some fourth nights. It would definitely reset by dawn of the next day though, and likely sooner. Erik planned to be in some version of the ancestral plane before then, one way or another. Either he’d die and the loop would reset, he’d succeed and see Bast or maybe even his mom, and the loop might or might not reset, or—or he’d die for good. He was desperate enough that every possibility seemed equally acceptable, even the last one. At least it’d be an _end_ , an answer. At least Erik would have tried to fix this.

Zuri must have seen some of his desperation. “If I tell you no, if I don’t help you, you will try this madness yourself, won’t you.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the kind of guy who gives up easy.”

Zuri stopped pacing and bowed his head for a moment, whether in prayer or thought, Erik didn’t know. He checked his watch again: 9:36 now. It was just Erik’s luck that he was somehow running out of time even when he had potentially infinite amount of it.

Finally, Zuri folded both his hands around his staff and lifted his head. “Very well. But it is not the work of a night. You must learn to meditate, and train—”

 _Fuck fuck fuck_. “Zuri, I don’t have _time_. All I’ve got is tonight. I can’t explain, but I swear on—on Bast and on my father’s spirit and on _Oakland_ that all I’ve got is tonight. I’ve got to try this tonight. Please.” None of this seemed to move Zuri enough, he only looked more concerned, which, great, if Zuri decided Erik needed an intervention— “This is the favor I’m calling in, Zuri. This is how we square up. You do this for me, and we’re even, okay? I’ll forgive you for leaving me behind and fucking over my parents.”

“Forgiveness isn’t really meant to be so transactional,” chided Zuri, but he started pacing again, slower now. “If you do this...you’re unlikely to succeed. Do you understand that? You don’t have the training, and such a thing has never been attempted. You’ll be lucky to come out with your mind and spirit intact.”

“Let’s take the disclaimers and fine print as a given. I get it, it might not work, I might die, whatever. I gotta try. And I have to do it _tonight_ , now.”

Zuri stopped pacing and turned to face him. He stepped closer, squinting at Erik.

“What will happen tomorrow, if you don’t?”

Erik laughed, the sound coming out too high and too loud. “Tomorrow won’t happen. That’s why I have to do this. Please, Zuri.”

This didn’t exactly make a great case for Erik being sane enough to take another trip to the ancestral plane. Erik could see exactly when Zuri decided to humor him, his shoulders relaxing and something like pity deepening the lines of his face. 

“Tomorrow you will see the healers, Erik. Promise me.”

“If we do this, yeah.”

“Whether what you attempt tonight is successful or not, you _will_ see the healers,” insisted Zuri, as if Erik hadn’t already said yes.

“Yeah, okay, I promise!”

“Then come. We will need to gather the materials before we go to the Hall of Kings.”

* * *

“If I sense, for even a moment, that you are in any sort of danger, I will administer the counteractive,” said Zuri as he handed over the bowl full of the herbal concoction that would hopefully get Erik beyond Wakanda’s ancestral plane.

“Do what you gotta do,” Erik told him, and tossed the drink back. The bitter burn of it was almost comforting by now.

“Focus on your mother,” instructed Zuri. “Focus on the memories and love that bind you to each other. Focus on her life, not her death.”

Erik was no kind of priest or shaman, but he did have one thing most other people trying this didn’t: a whole hell of a lot of experience with hanging out in the ancestral plane or afterlife or whatever the hell it was, and desperate focus. If there were other things he should’ve been trying—meditation, prayer, a theology degree’s worth of knowledge about various afterlives and near death experiences—he didn’t know or care.

The warm sand covered him, the weight heavier than should have been possible, and he both did and didn’t follow Zuri’s instructions. He thought of his mom, yeah, every last hoarded and hazy childhood memory he had: her warmth when she’d held him or hugged him, her smile and the dimples he’d inherited from her, her voice as she’d read African folktales to him. The tears in her eyes the last time he’d seen her, in a grim and ugly prison visiting room, even though she’d been trying to smile.

But he thought of Bast too. That watchful, towering sculpture, that growling and purring presence, that panther that had led him and T’Challa to their fathers. Could it lead Erik to his mother too?

It didn’t matter. His mother was just the excuse for this whole thing.

_Bast! I wanna talk to you! I want out of this fucking time loop! I get the point, okay? I’ve achieved as much fucking enlightenment as I’m ever going to achieve! So end this shit, one way or another!_

The darkness of his closed eyes turned into the deeper darkness of the herbs, and the ritual finally took him.

When Erik opened his eyes, he wasn’t anywhere. Not the apartment in the projects, and not the Wakandan veld, and not even any kind of traditional heaven or hell. He was in a foggy, gray nowhere, alone.

“Hello? You here, cat god? I wanna have a chat! Cuz I figure that’s easier than just living the same four fucking days over and over again wondering what the hell it is you even want from me! I learned to use my goddamn words in kindergarten, maybe you should try it out!”

Something dark moved in the fog, little more than a smudge of shadow somewhere in what might have been the middle distance. It was hard to tell, hard to get his bearings here in a place that was nowhere. He only even knew the ground was there because he was standing on it, and without a horizon or any other kind of landmark, he had no idea how far off that little smudge was or how fast it was moving relative to him. Still, it was something, so Erik followed it. When he caught up to it, the smudge of shadow resolved into a little black cat. _Cute_ , thought Erik.

“So? Is this hell, or what?” he asked the cat/goddess/spirit guide/whatever the fuck it was.

_THIS IS NO HELL, N’JADAKA. YOU SOUGHT YOUR MOTHER. DO YOU NOT WISH TO SEE HER?_

He fought to avoid flinching at the omnipresent voice. “What? I—yeah, if—she’s here?”

_I CAN GUIDE YOU TO HER._

“Right. Okay. Uh, thanks. And what about the whole time loop situation? Is _that_ hell?”

 _IT IS NOT PUNISHMENT. IT IS ATTEMPTING TO TEACH YOU SOMETHING._ The cat settled daintily on its haunches and gave Erik a haughty, disdainful look. Or maybe that was just the cat’s face. Hard to tell, with cats. _IT TURNS OUT YOU ARE NOT A VERY GOOD STUDENT._

“Fuck you, I’m a great student!” snapped Erik. “Your lessons are shitty!”

The cat sighed, and somehow managed to look simultaneously amused, disappointed, and annoyed.

 _TRULY, YOU ARE A DESCENDANT OF BASHENGA._ Erik couldn’t tell if this was a diss on him or on Bashenga, or both. It was hard to gauge sarcasm in a magical cat goddess’s voice that was beamed straight into his head. Before Erik could argue more, Bast continued, _I SOUGHT TO GIVE YOU A CHANCE, N’JADAKA. A CHANCE TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT, TO JOIN YOUR TRIBE AND HELP IT, AND IN SO HELPING, HELP THE ENTIRE WORLD. WOULD YOU HAVE PREFERRED A FINAL DEATH?_

“I’d have preferred some answers. How the hell am I supposed to know what you think making things right is? Why the hell should I be dancing to your tune anyway? I’ve made things right, I’ve spent dozens of loops making things right and not killing anybody or conquering any countries—”

 _AND YET, ONLY NOW HAVE YOU LEARNED HOW TO BEGIN TO MOVE FORWARD TOWARDS A BETTER WORLD, HOW TO JOIN YOUR TRIBE._ The cat sniffed and licked at its paws. _I DID WHAT I INTENDED._

Fucking _cats_.

“Okay, great. Congrats. You all up in everyone’s shit like this? ‘Cause if so, you could’ve stepped in to help my dad.”

_NO, NOT EVERYONE. I AM LIMITED IN SUCH INTERVENTIONS. THE BLACK PANTHERS ARE AS CLOSE AS IT GETS TO MY AVATARS ON EARTH. YOU TOOK ON THAT MANTLE, THOUGH IT WAS BUT BRIEFLY, AND YOU WERE ON THE BRINK OF DEATH. IT WAS ENOUGH OF AN OPENING TO ALLOW ME TO INTERVENE._

This raised some more questions, but Erik was no priest and he sure as hell wasn’t a philosopher, so he focused on the important issue.

“So is this it? Can time start working for me again?”

Bast stopped grooming herself and got up, padding with leisurely grace across the featureless gray expanse. When Erik didn’t follow, she looked back. _WELL? COME ALONG, YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR MOTHER, DON’T YOU?_

“That’s not an answer!” he shouted, but he followed anyway.

* * *

Bast led him through the dull mist until all the nothingness finally gave way to the first glimmers of green and gold: a sunlit garden, or a park, seemingly forming under his feet with every step.

Erik stopped as the fog dissipated around him. “What am I supposed to say to her? Shit, is she even gonna know me?”

Bast meowed in disapproval, which didn’t seem like an especially godly thing to do. A _RE YOU REALLY GOING TO TURN BACK NOW AFTER COMING SO FAR?_

There was someone in the garden.

He didn’t recognize the place, but he recognized her: a cloud of black curls caught back with a wide headband, brown skin a few shades lighter than his, the familiar curve of her cheek. She was facing away from him, crouched down with a basket at her side, and the basket was full of—Erik squinted. His mind expected fruits or vegetables, flowers maybe, or gardening supplies like gloves or shears, but there was something odd and shimmering in the basket instead, a harvest of gentle light. And the garden too, it wasn’t quite earthly, a glowing haze over everything that resisted Erik’s attempts to see details. Erik risked a look up at the sky: no swirling purple auroras, but somehow, stars shone in the daytime sky and the colors weren’t quite right, were too intense and vivid.

Before Erik could say anything to get his mom’s attention or walk closer, Bast trotted ahead to wind her way around her legs.

“Hey kitty,” she said, and just the sound of her smooth and sweet voice turned Erik small again.

He almost ran to her like that, like time hadn’t passed at all, like he was still the baby boy she’d left behind, like he could return to being the child who wouldn’t even know how to imagine the tattooed scars he’d put on his body, or the reason for them. He could be innocent again, and safe, happy and loved. He hadn’t been grateful enough for all that, the first time around.

But it was too late for all of that. He’d made his choices and so had his mother, and the world had taken its price for them. They had to face each other as they were now.

He clenched his fists until he was sure he was wholly himself, as his mom scooped the goddess up for a cuddle. “Now where have you been? Did you bring me something?” she asked, and Bast meowed and purred, a rumble way too big for that small cat body.

“Hey Mama,” said Erik. She whirled to face him, dropping Bast.

She looked younger than he remembered or—no, she wasn’t younger. It was just that Erik was older. Older than she’d ever had a chance to be.

“Erik?” she whispered. Her dark brown eyes went wide and filled with tears. “Oh no, oh baby, don’t tell me you’re—”

“I’m not dead,” he assured her. “Just, uh, just here to see you.”

Shit, Erik really hadn’t thought this through. He had no idea what she did or didn’t know, or how much time had passed for her, if it had even really passed at all. Had she wondered where N’Jobu was? Was she alone here, or were their lost ancestors here too?

“How?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Wakanda.”

She took slow steps towards him, until she was at arm's length, then she reached a wondering and shaking hand up towards him. Erik had a good half a foot of height on her now, which seemed impossible. Hadn’t he always looked up to her? Hadn’t her arms always engulfed him like the strongest, safest place in the world? Now she was the one who was small in his arms, and he held her carefully, even though she was beyond all hurt by now.

“Didn’t think it’d been so long,” she murmured, as she cupped his cheek in her palm. “You’re all grown up.”

“Yeah.”

Her tears spilled over. “I’m sorry, baby. I never wanted to leave you behind like that.” She laughed, and it turned into a sob. “You know, when I heard about Joe, I started planning a goddamn prison break. Came up with all kinds of wild ideas to bust out and get to you.”

Now Erik was the one tearing up. He’d dreamed up some of those what-ifs too, just another fairy tale possibility that had turned to ash.

“What, and go on the run together?” he asked and she hummed an affirmative.

“I thought I could get us to Wakanda, that even if they didn’t let me in, they’d take you,” she smiled, tremulous but so bright. “You got there eventually, huh? Tell me all about it, baby, about what you’ve been doing, I wanna know everything.”

Erik shouldn’t have come here. He couldn’t tell her everything, he couldn’t. He’d break her fucking heart.

“I’m not sure you do, Mama. It’s—it’s not a pretty story.”

“But you’re in Wakanda now, you said, and your daddy was a prince there—”

“Yeah, I’m in Wakanda now, and it’s—I’m fine, my cousin, T’Challa, he’s—” Erik shook his head. “I only got to Wakanda a few days ago, Mama.”

Well, by certain definitions of a few days, anyway. His mom could tell there was a lot he wasn’t saying, and shit, that canny, I-know-you’re-up-to-something mom look hadn’t lost any of its strength.

“Tell me, Erik. Tell me what happened after—after I died.” He looked down and shook his head, but she gripped his chin and made him face her. “Tell me. If you can’t be honest with your mama when she’s dead, then when the hell can you? You gonna wait ’til you’re dead for real?”

And okay, that was fair.

“Not sure I’ve got the time, but alright. I can give you the highlights, at least.”

He distilled it all down to the bare bones of it: foster care, Annapolis, MIT, the SEALs. He faltered after that, uncertain what to say or how to say it.

“I wanted to finish what you and Dad had started,” he began, slowly, and his mom frowned.

“That’s not exactly the kinda life we wanted for you.”

“Dad said pretty much the same thing. Not sure what either of you expected though. What, was the revolution gonna be over by the time I hit high school?”

His mom’s mouth twisted, but she didn’t refute him. Instead, she asked, “So what’d you do?”

“Dad didn’t wanna challenge his brother for the throne and get the vibranium that way. I figured that was part of where he went wrong. So I got myself to Wakanda, and I challenged my cousin T’Challa for the throne.”

She sucked in a careful breath, as if bracing herself for whatever he’d say next.

“And? Is my son a king now?” she asked.

“Was for a couple days. I almost did it, I almost got the vibranium and the weapons out where they needed to go. Then I got my ass killed. And then I woke up again, four days earlier, like it had never happened. Been living my own personal four-day Groundhog Day loop ever since. You can thank Bast for that,” he said, nodding over at where Bast was sitting and basking in the sun, looking for all the world like just another lazy cat.

 _YOU’RE WELCOME_ , said Bast, and his mom startled.

“I don’t know where to even start,” she said faintly. “What are you _doing_ , Erik?”

“I thought I was freeing our people, overthrowing our oppressors.”

“By overthrowing your own people’s government?”

“Hey, challenging the king is legit in Wakanda! And my dad was a prince, wasn’t he, I’ve got a right to that throne.”

“Okay, well, walk me through the plan here. You arm Black and brown folks—”

“The Wakandan War Dogs were supposed to do it, CIA style.”

“With coups and dirty wars,” she said, raising an eyebrow in that dangerous kinda way, the _that was the wrong answer_ kind of way.

“There’s no other kind of war, Mama,” he said, and she shook her head, her jaw going tight and stubborn. “Hey, this was Dad’s plan too, wasn’t it? Why are you looking so mad about it now?”

“You’re assuming I agreed with your dad about everything,” she snapped. “I didn’t. I wanted to use Wakanda’s tech to support a new kind of Black Panther party, not kick off World War III with revolutions and coups.”

“I’m not eager to kick off World War III either, okay? I’ve learned some things living the same four days over and over again, I’ve played out a whole lotta ugly scenarios. I just—this is what I know how to do, Mama.”

His mom sighed.

“You can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools, Erik. Liberating our people, making a better world for us, it’s not about just fighting the war the white man’s world wants us to fight, and coming out on top. What’s the damn point, if we’re just gonna end up like them?”

“I know, okay, I get it—”

“Do you? You say this is all you know how to do. Well, fuck that,” she said, and the curse shocked Erik into laughter. The bright and fierce light in her eyes reminded him of Nakia. “Come home from the war, baby. You don’t gotta be what the war made you into. You’re a prince of Wakanda, and you’re my son. You’ve done so much all on your own, been so brave and so smart. And I’m so sorry you were alone, but I am so proud of you. And I know you’ve got options.”

He’d spent the last few days in Wakanda seeing just what other options he had. He _knew_ he had options. He knew now what T’Challa was willing to do, what he’d offer Erik. If he took that offer though, if he let go of what he’d fought so hard for, what he’d lied and stolen and _killed_ for—

“It doesn’t feel like enough, Mama. Feels like all I can do is start a war and win it. I’m good at that, I know how it works, and I know it works fast. They say a change is gonna come, well how long have we been waiting? I’m done _waiting_. That’s why I wanted to do it my way.” 

His mom took his face in her small, warm hands.

“Listen, I know, sometimes you gotta fight. You know I believed that, you know I lived that. But you gotta build too. You gotta teach. You gotta fill people’s bellies, and nurture their spirits, and give ‘em chances for rest and peace. And it’s fine if _you_ choose one of those paths for helping, if you choose to fight, but baby, you can’t choose it for everyone else too. If you start the kinda war you and your daddy wanted, that’s what you’d be doing.”

“Yeah, I figured that out. I’ve met people in Wakanda who wanna do all of those other things. But—I thought doing it my way was worth the cost.”

“And now?” He shrugged and looked down. Bast’s attention was palpable as his mom tipped his chin back up and smiled at him, saying, “You got time to work it out. That’s the one thing living the same days over and over again is good for, right?”

“It’s kinda been feeling more like some kinda hell, actually,” he admitted, and wiped at his eyes before his mom could.

“It’s a chance, Erik,” she said, then glanced over at Bast with delighted and awed wonder. “A miracle, even. You know what I would’ve given for a miracle like that?” Now she was the one who was crying.

“Wish you could’ve gotten one, Mama. You sure as hell deserve it more than I do.”

She shook her head. “None of that now. Come on, sit with me a while, if you can. Let’s talk about some things that aren’t life or death.”

“Don’t know if I’ve got the time for that,” said Erik, casting a glance at Bast.

 _I CAN GIVE YOU A LITTLE WHILE LONGER_.

His mom smiled, brave and bright through her tears. “Let’s not waste it then.”

* * *

_DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET, N’JADAKA? DO YOU SEE A WAY TO MOVE FORWARD? DO YOU SEE WHAT WAKANDA AND THE WORLD NEED OF YOU?_

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I get it now.”

_THEN GO. LET THIS BE THE LAST TIME YOU LIVE THROUGH THESE FOUR DAYS, FOR GOOD OR FOR ILL._

Panic rushed through him, cold and immediate. After so long living in a four-day version of the world where consequences were temporary, the reinstatement of causality’s finality was terrifying.

“Okay, but what if I fuck it up again. You’ve gotta give me another shot—”

_YOU WILL NOT FUCK IT UP. GO, ERIK N’JADAKA STEVENS. YOU ARE NEEDED._

* * *

_This is it_ , Erik thought when he woke up in Busan again. For the last time, hopefully.

“Linda. Hey, Linda, you up?”

Linda groaned and turned away from him. “Ugh, Erik, baby, go back to sleep, it’s too early. We don’t gotta get up for another hour.”

“C’mon, get up, Linda,” said Erik, shaking her shoulder gently. “I’m changing the plan.”

Linda flopped over to glare at him.

“What? Why? The plan’s great, the plan’s airtight. Is this about Limbani? You don’t have to worry about him, he’s just in it for the money, he’ll stay in line until he gets his cut.”

“Yeah, no, I wanna change that plan too, but I’m talking about the bigger plan.”

Linda pushed her morning-wild hair out of her eyes and squinted at him suspiciously. “Okay, what do you wanna change about it?”

“I’m thinking I can make an ally out of T’Challa. Maybe we don’t have to start a war, maybe we could be more strategic, think more long-term.”

Linda laughed. “Okay, try and make friends with your cousin, sure. That’s probably gonna end in tears when you gotta challenge him for the throne, but whatever. And no war? You getting cold feet, Stevens? Feeling an attack of conscience?”

She got up and started yanking her clothes on, anger in every brisk motion. Erik hoped he wasn’t fucking this loop up right from the start. If she left, or if she went rogue, Erik was gonna have a lot of problems. But he wanted to get her out of this alive, this time. Erik didn’t love her, but he owed her that.

“I just don’t wanna be the reason a bunch of Black and brown kids end up stuck fighting wars they never asked for or wanted. I’ve lived that life, you know?”

Now Linda whirled on him, eyes widening in incredulity.

“Think of the children? Seriously? That’s what you’re going with?” She shook her head in disgust. “I can’t believe you’re losing your fucking nerve after you spent weeks going on like you’re the second coming of Nat Turner.”

“What’s it to you, Linda?” he snapped. “You’ll get paid no matter what.”

“It isn’t just about the money! I’m in this for liberation too, asshole!”

“Alright, alright, sorry. Listen, can I tell you about the new plan? It’s better, I swear: less dangerous, and you know Klaue’s gonna double-cross us the first chance he gets. I wanna deal with him before he takes the money and runs.”

“Fine,” said Linda, crossing her arms. “Tell me the new plan, then.”

* * *

Linda wasn’t exactly happy, but Erik promising her his own share of Klaue’s diamond haul went a long way towards sweetening her disposition.

“This is gonna work out better, I promise,” he told her, as she started the van.

She snorted. “Yeah? Better than what?”

_Better than me shooting you to get to Klaue. Better than you getting caught._

“It’s safer,” he amended.

Her hands clenched on the steering wheel and she looked out the windshield with unfocused eyes.

“You were never gonna take me to Wakanda, were you,” she said.

Erik’s mouth opened to give her an automatic denial, but any words dried up. Something like hundreds of loops, and not once had he kept Linda with him. He hadn’t even considered the possibility. Excuses bubbled up and almost came out of his mouth: _Wakanda wouldn’t let you in, I was gonna come back for you, I’ll invite you when I take my rightful place_ …pathetic rationalization, all of it. There was no use in lying to Linda, not now, and Erik didn’t have it in him to try.

“We didn’t make any promises to each other, not like that,” Erik told her, because that was the bare and unlovely truth.

He’d been careful. He’d only ever promised her the score and the mayhem, a little bit of retributive theft and the hope of freeing their people. The sex had been a nice bonus, but it hadn’t been a promise of anything other than some mutual physical satisfaction.

“Yeah, I know. But I thought we owed each other _something_ , at least.” Her mouth twisted, an ugly expression on her pretty face. “Stupid of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what.”

 _For killing you. For letting you die. For ditching you. For forgetting about you._ All that had happened, and it hadn’t, and Erik wasn’t sure what exactly he could apologize for to this version of Linda.

“For being a self-absorbed asshole. For using you.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said, finally pulling the van out to drive onto the road. “I knew you were a fuckboy from the start. Just give me my money and actually _do something_ for Black folks. Because if I see you on the news in a couple months living large as a prince of Wakanda while the people from where you’re _really_ from are still suffering, I swear to god I will find my way to Wakanda just to assassinate your ass.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

* * *

By now, Erik had dozens if not hundreds of scenarios for breaking Klaue out or getting rid of him, and he knew how all of them would end. Even so, for the first time in who knew how many loops, Erik wished for more time to plan. With the specter of finality hanging over him, every choice he made was another possibility for a failure he couldn’t undo or redo. The last loop had shown him the path of least resistance when it came to handling Klaue and getting to Wakanda, and Erik was tempted to try it again.

It would have been so easy. But it wouldn’t have been _true_.

No lies this time, thought Erik. No more playing a part. Wakanda—T’Challa, his family—would all have to accept Erik exactly as he was.

* * *

They busted Klaue out earlier than the original plan called for, so they could be free and clear before T’Challa and the others showed up, and so the CIA had no reason to pin the jailbreak on Wakanda. Linda gave Limbani a fistful of the diamonds and sent him packing, and they headed on to the airfield for what Klaue thought would be his getaway.

Before Klaue could make his move, Linda knocked him out with one furious blow to his head. Shit, it could’ve been that easy? Embarrassed shame warmed Erik’s cheeks in a rare blush. He should’ve just been straight with Linda from the start.

“Thanks,” Erik said.

“Sure we can’t kill him?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“I need him alive to face justice in Wakanda.”

“He’s gonna blow up your spot, you know that, right?” Linda said. “He’ll take you down with him if you leave him alive.”

“Nah, I got a plan for that. I’m just gonna tell my cousin the king that it was all part of my plan, I was always gonna double-cross him and get him to Wakanda. I just needed to keep the CIA out of it. Who’re they gonna believe, the guy with the thief’s brand on him, or a lost prince?”

Linda raised a skeptical eyebrow, and looked like she was getting ready to argue with him, before she shrugged and said, “If you say so.”

Erik pulled out the remaining diamonds, and handed them all to her: his share, Klaue’s, and her own. He almost wished he could be the kind of man who could give her something more, something true. All this time, he could’ve had a partner in her, if he’d been willing to try. Time loops or no time loops though, there were some things he’d run out of time to fix.

“Here, take it. Take the plane, go. Head for Brunei or Montenegro or something.”

“What? You don’t have to give me all of the diamonds—”

“I’m not gonna need them. C’mon, take it. I’m, uh, sorry for being a fuckboy.”

Linda laughed, and took the diamonds. She hauled him in for one last kiss too, mean and rough, until she let him gentle it into something like an apology.

“Yeah, okay,” she said when she pulled away with a smile that was only a little bitter. “Good luck, Erik.”

* * *

Getting Klaue to T’Challa without invoking Okoye’s wrath or embroiling them all in an international diplomacy clusterfuck was, Erik hoped, just a matter of timing. This time, instead of ambushing the Wakandans in their ritzy hotel suite, Erik waited for them in a maintenance truck at the private airport with the camouflaged royal talon jet, Klaue bound and hidden under a tarp pulled over the truck bed. Erik knew from experience that Ross couldn’t keep the Wakandans in South Korea, not when South Korea wasn’t all that willing to get any more involved than it already was. The Wakandans would be leaving soon, and Erik intended to leave with them. He just had to wait for them to show up.

When they finally arrived, striding towards the plane like the runway was the kind meant for models instead of planes, Erik got out of the truck.

“Excuse me, is there a problem with the plane?” asked Okoye once they were in speaking distance.

“Nah, no problem. I heard y’all were looking for this guy,” Erik called out. When they got closer, Erik spread his hands to show they were empty. “Figured you wouldn’t want the CIA all up in Wakanda’s business, so here’s Wakanda’s Most Wanted thief and terrorist, ready and waiting for extradition without any CIA interference.”

He removed the tarp to reveal Klaue, bound and gagged and furious with it.

“Who are you?” demanded Okoye. “Why have you brought Klaue to us?”

“My name’s Erik N’Jadaka Stevens. I’m Prince N’Jobu’s son. And I’m trying to make some things right, like the things my dad fucked up. I’m trying to get some justice for the people Klaue fucked over.”

The moment of truth had gotten boring a long time ago, and Erik had basically lost his ability to pretend it wasn’t anything other than tedious and predictable. There’d be the denial, then the requesting of DNA samples, then the full explanations. This time though, after the last loop, being back at square one with T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia was a hard hit to take. If he’d earned their acceptance once, he could do it again, but that was hard to remember when T’Challa was looking at him with shock and suspicion, when Okoye and Nakia had battle-ready stances.

“My uncle had no son,” said T’Challa, though he didn’t sound sure about it.

Erik pulled out the ring hanging from the chain around his neck, then showed off his inner lip tattoo.

“Yeah, he did. And I’m sorry for your loss and all, but your dad knew what really happened to my dad, and he knew about me. So did Zuri. Listen, this isn’t a conversation for an airport runway, and I don’t want the CIA or South Koreans to take custody of Klaue again. So can we take this inside?”

Okoye and T’Challa locked eyes and had a silent conversation that ended in Okoye shaking her head with one sharp and vehement gesture. Erik sighed. Fucking Wakanda and its secrecy.

“I know that’s a royal talon jet, and I know Wakanda isn’t the poor backwater it pretends to be. My dad taught me a lot, you don’t gotta worry about keeping up your cover.”

“Alright,” said T’Challa, after one last silent discussion with Okoye and Nakia. “Let’s discuss this inside.”

* * *

On the jet, Erik laid out the whole story: the whole ugly mess between their fathers, how Erik had gotten here. He left out the time loop part though. Erik was only willing to go so far with his whole tell the truth play here, and when he finally broke out of this time loop, he wasn’t looking to spend his first fifth day in who know how long on the Wakandan equivalent of a psych hold.

“And why should we believe such a tale,” called back Okoye from the pilot’s seat.

Erik stifled a groan of frustration. They’d confirmed his War Dog tattoo was legit, and the DNA test had revealed him to be N’Jobu’s son, and still: wary suspicion and disbelief. Just once, he wanted someone to believe him. He glanced at T’Challa, who was frowning deeply, his hands clasped together tight. By now, Erik knew T’Challa about as well as a person could when he’d only ever met him during the same four days, so he knew that T’Challa wanted to fight, or shout. Erik knew that T’Challa would, with one sharp and brash goad from Erik. No such urge rose up in Erik though; instead, he was actually kind of sorry to kill T’Challa’s unquestioned adoration of T’Chaka. T’Chaka hadn’t been a good man when it came down to it, and he sure as hell hadn’t been a good uncle, but he’d been a good father to T’Challa and Shuri.

When T’Challa stayed silent, Erik said, “I’ve got no reason to come up with a wild story like that.” Though little did they know it was actually a hell of a lot wilder.

“What will Klaue say, if we ask him?” asked Nakia.

“He’ll say we were working together. But my plan was always to double-cross him, turn him over to you for justice,” said Erik, and okay, he was pushing the truth pretty far with that. Sure, Erik _had_ always planned to double-cross Klaue. It was just that the double-cross definitely hadn’t always involved turning Klaue over to Wakanda for trial. But if Erik wasn’t gonna bring up the hundreds of times he’d lived these four days, this was as true as it got. “I just needed an in to Wakanda, since I couldn’t exactly knock on your front door.”

Okoye was, as usual, unmoved. “So you made common cause with a criminal.”

“Hey, I tried doing things the polite way. I went to the consulate, I told them about my dad, showed them my tattoo and my ring, and I still got turned away. And I got my own beef with Klaue too, on account of my dad. But whatever, don’t take my word for it. Ask Zuri.”

Finally, T’Challa spoke, unclenching his hands with careful deliberation.

“We will do so, and we will meet with the Council. Regardless of what we learn, I thank you for apprehending Klaue, Erik. He has escaped justice for too long.” He tried for a smile, and was almost successful. “Now, we will be near Wakandan airspace soon enough. Let me show you our country.”

That T’Challa didn’t call it _our home_ burned. For a long moment, Erik almost lost his nerve: would T’Challa welcome him in this timeline, when Erik went forward with his plan? Would he offer Erik a chance this time, once he knew who Erik truly was? Erik was going to find out in a couple days. And hell, if it went wrong, at least Erik would have the time to try to fix it instead of just undoing and redoing it all over and over again. He’d take the risk.

“Yeah, okay,” said Erik, and joined T’Challa at the jet’s wide windows.

This was far from Erik’s first glimpse of Wakanda. It was the first time it felt like a return though, something in him relaxing at the first sight of the warm, gilded hills rushing beneath them. _This really could be home_ , thought Erik, and looked at the landscape below as it rushed by.

When the mountains and rocky hills gave way to the plains, Okoye flew the talon jet low enough to spot some Border Tribe riders on their horses, likely headed to or from their patrols of the border. Erik smiled to see them waving cheerfully up at the jet, the blue of their Basotho blankets snapping in the wind, and when he looked over at T’Challa and Nakia, he saw that they were smiling too. A jolt of belonging shot through him—not quite deja vu in its familiar strength, but more a presentiment: _these people could be yours too_.

“What did you father tell you of Wakanda?” asked T’Challa.

“Whole lotta stuff that sounded like sci-fi fairy tales, mostly. For a long time after he died, that’s all I thought they were.”

“Something changed your mind, clearly.”

“I had my dad’s journals. The older I got, the more I understood them, and not just ‘cause of the language. Learned some stuff about vibranium, learned about Klaue. It’s taken me this long to catch up with that motherfucker and find out the truth about my dad and Wakanda.”

“The rest of your family didn’t know anything? Your mother’s people, I mean.”

T’Challa’s naivety was almost sweet, really. Of course he thought everyone had a tribe ready to welcome them, a vast extended network of support, of belonging. Oakland had done its best by Erik, had done what it could to get Erik out, but he’d just been another orphan, one more lost kid in a city full of them.

“There wasn’t anyone else. My ma died in prison, not long after my dad. She didn’t really have any family.”

“I’m sorry,” said T’Challa softly, honest compassion in the shine of his eyes. “If we had known, we would have come for you, we would have brought you home to Wakanda, or provided you with a guardian in Oakland if you’d wanted to stay there.”

“I know,” said Erik.

His certainty caught T’Challa and Nakia off guard. But of course, they didn’t know that T’Challa nearly always told Erik that. For so long, it had seemed like an empty promise, a hollow condolence of a might-have-been. Now, finally, Erik really, truly believed T’Challa.

“That’s why your dad and Zuri didn’t tell anyone about me,” Erik continued.

T’Challa clearly wanted to reflexively deny it, but he kept his mouth shut, and went with the diplomatic response. “I hope Zuri can provide us both with answers about what happened to your father and why you were left behind.”

* * *

By now, Erik had all the answers he’d ever wanted or needed from Zuri, so when Zuri came clean in front of T’Challa, Ramonda, and the council of elders, Erik didn’t bother to pretend it was all new to him. None of this was new: Zuri’s shame and sorrow and regret, Ramonda’s shock and furious disappointment in her late husband and in Zuri, T’Challa’s anger. There was a comfort in all of it by now, even—in the predictability of it, in the confirmation that yeah, what T’Chaka and Zuri did to Erik was fucked up, it was worthy of shame. The child Erik had been had deserved better than to be abandoned.

“It is the greatest regret of my life that I never went back for you,” Zuri told Erik, tears streaming down his face.

“I can’t make that better for you,” Erik said. “And I’m not sure I can forgive you yet.”

Zuri nodded and bowed his head. “I understand. I don’t expect forgiveness. But if there is anything you want to know, about your father or your mother, or my mission for T’Chaka, I will tell you. Anything.”

“And you are, obviously, welcome here in Wakanda, though I am more sorry than I can say that such welcome has come so late,” added Ramonda.

“We practice restorative justice here in Wakanda. Are you familiar with it?” asked T’Challa.

“Yeah, some,” Erik said, and T’Challa nodded.

“So, there will be some investigation into my father’s actions,” T’Challa told him. “The advocate in charge of this investigation will present their report to the Council once it is complete. The advocate will take a statement from you as well, Erik. It is too late for my father to speak for himself, or for you to tell him what justice you would seek from him, but if there is anything we can do to welcome you to this family, this community, to bring you justice, you need only tell us.”

Well, if T’Challa was gonna ask, Erik was gonna tell him.

“I want Wakanda to stop abandoning my brothers and sisters.”

T’Challa’s face went slack with surprise. “You have siblings?” he said faintly, and Erik almost laughed.

“Nah, I mean all the Black and brown folks outside these borders, who y’all have been leaving to be enslaved and killed and oppressed for _centuries_. That’s the justice I want. You can’t go back in time and fix my life, bring me home to be brought up with a vibranium spoon in my mouth, and even if you could, I wouldn’t want you to. I wouldn’t wanna be a spoiled prince living it up in a bubble while the rest of our people suffer. And if I’m gonna be a prince now, that sure as hell isn’t the kinda prince I wanna be.” Erik looked to T’Challa. “Is that the kinda king you wanna be?”

T’Challa’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a sharp breath, but before he could say anything, one of the Merchant Tribe elders spoke.

“You would ask us to change our entire way of life?” she demanded, then shook her head. “You are owed justice, young man, but you are not owed that.”

“Maybe not. But Wakanda owes the world that. You can’t keep hiding.” Erik gestured outside to the view of Birnin Zana. “You gotta use all this to _do something_ , to help people, to fight for them. Not just to hide away. You think it was wrong to abandon me, but you only think that ‘cause I’m your flesh and blood, I guess. Well, what about everyone else who shares the color of your skin?”

T’Challa frowned deeply, and clasped his hands together so tightly it had to hurt. He was silent for a long, long moment.

“You are not wrong that Wakanda must do more to help the world outside our borders. But above all else, I am King of Wakanda, and that is where my duty lies,” said T’Challa eventually. Erik only barely stifled his wince of disappointment and disgust at hearing T’Chaka’s words come out of T’Challa’s mouth, no matter that they’d come out with some doubt shading the words. T’Challa continued, “I must put my people’s safety first.”

If it had been just the two of them, with no audience save maybe Nakia, maybe this could’ve gone down differently. But here, in front of the Council and the head priest and the Queen Mother, tradition had to weigh heavily on T’Challa. And maybe, Erik thought, T’Challa needed his own ancestral plane spirit journey in every loop. Maybe he needed a push.

“Yeah, I hear you,” Erik said, nodding. He took a deep breath, and hoped to Bast he wasn’t about to irrevocably fuck up his chance at getting this right. “And I, Erik N’Jadaka Stevens, challenge you for the throne. It’s time to find a new way to be King of Wakanda.”

The throne room erupted into chaos, but Erik didn’t care. He held T’Challa’s eyes, and willed him to understand why Erik was doing this.

And maybe T’Challa did, or maybe he just thought a challenge was inevitable. He closed his eyes for a moment, and Erik saw no anger on his cousin’s face, only pained acceptance.

“Very well. I accept, cousin. The challenge will go forward tomorrow.”

“So soon! There must be preparations, invitations to the tribes—” protested an elder, before he was cut off with a sharp wave of T’Challa’s hand.

“No, that isn’t necessary. Only the family and the Council need attend,” ordered T’Challa. “Zuri, inform Erik of the rules and customs, please. You will preside over the challenge.”

“Yes, my king,” said Zuri, bowing deeply.

T’Challa approached Erik, hesitant, but still, not angry. “Whatever happens tomorrow, cousin, I hope it brings you some measure of peace, or closure. Wakanda has failed you, and I hope we can make it right, one way or another.”

“Yeah, me too.”

* * *

Just like in so many previous loops, the challenge at Warrior Falls took place in the late afternoon, when the setting sun painted the shallow waters with the colors of the blazing sky.The ceaseless rush of the falling waters only just covered the restive murmurs of the onlookers. The atmosphere was more confused than tense though; Erik thought T’Challa got why he was doing this, but no one else seemed to.

Ramonda had taken him aside the night before, and he knew what it must have cost her pride to say, _if this is about vengeance, please, do not make T’Challa pay for the wrongs of his father._

 _It’s not about vengeance, Auntie_ , he’d told her, but he didn’t think she’d believed him. Zuri had tried the same appeal, and Erik had given him the same answer.

Now, as he and T’Challa readied themselves for combat, Zuri tried one last time to dissuade him.

“Erik, I know T’Chaka and I wronged you, but please, T’Challa had nothing to do with any of this—”

“This isn’t about T’Challa,” said Erik. “Not really. And this isn’t about revenge either. This is about shaking things up, this is about Wakanda. I’m doing this, Zuri, _we’re_ doing this.”

T’Challa was already waiting in the combat ring, his weapon and shield held loose and ready, the black panther paint of his tribe adorning his face and chest, a panther claw necklace around his throat. Erik joined him, his face and chest bare. He had only his self-inflicted scars, and his dog tags.

“I’ve killed a lot of people to get here, cuz,” Erik said. “Fought in America’s wars, some of ‘em against my own people on this continent. I got these scars to honor them. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing. Not so sure now.”

They both dropped into their fighting stances and began to circle each other as the drummers took up their steady beat, the pounding of the drums echoing and eventually overtaking the pounding of the waterfalls.

“They called you Killmonger,” T’Challa noted, a frown troubling his forehead. “It was in your file. I don’t think the name suits you.”

“No?”

“No. Maybe it did, once. But I think you are tired of killing, cousin,” said T’Challa, as he so often did. One day, hopefully soon, Erik would ask him how he knew, what gave it away. “You don’t need to do this, Erik.”

“What, do you think this is about revenge too? It’s not. I told you, this is about justice, this is about finding a new way to be king of Wakanda,” said Erik, and then he lunged forward to start the fight in earnest.

After so many versions of this fight, after all the times he’d faced T’Challa in combat, there were no surprises. Erik knew how T’Challa fought, he knew that T’Challa wouldn’t go for the kill, not until he had to. By now this fight was like a dance Erik knew the choreography to by heart. So Erik went on the offensive, pulling his blows just enough to avoid really injuring T’Challa; he wasn’t in this to make T’Challa suffer. Even so, T’Challa was at too much of a disadvantage without the heart-shaped herb, and without all Erik’s experience with this particular fight. It didn’t take all that long to disarm and corner him.

Not that T’Challa was ready to give up. He went for one last desperate tackle and grapple, but Erik was ready for that too, and he swept T’Challa’s legs out under him, bringing T’Challa crashing down into the shallow water. Before T’Challa could get on his feet again, Erik brought his blade to T’Challa’s throat. The audience of family and Dora Milaje cried out, but Erik ignored them. He could see the flutter of T’Challa’s pulse, knew with absolute certainty the angle and force required to slash his jugular open. He’d done it before.

Not this time, though.

As always, T’Challa didn’t yield. He only waited, head held high even as he was on his knees, hands open and empty at his sides.

“Maybe I could be a good king,” Erik told him. “I’d change things up, that’s for damn sure: open up Wakanda, help lift up Black and brown people all over the world, fight for ‘em, give ‘em the tools to fight their oppressors.” Erik tossed his weapon aside, and T’Challa’s eyes went wide and hopeful and confused. “But the thing is, I’m not a good man, cuz. You are. I know you can be a good king _and_ a good man, and do the right thing for the world _and_ Wakanda.”

Then, Erik held out his hand to T’Challa and said, “I yield.”

For a long moment, there was no sound but the rush and roar of the waterfalls below them. The drums had long since gone silent, and none of the spectators said a word.

“You seem so certain I know what the right thing is,” said T’Challa, still kneeling.

Erik couldn’t explain to him how he knew: how it had taken dozens, hundreds of loops for him to realize it, how it had taken even longer for him to recognize it as the strength it was.

“You’ll figure it out. All I’m asking for is a seat at the table. I wanna be here to remind y’all about all the people you’ve shut out and left behind. I wanna make some things right, fix what our dads fucked up.”

T’Challa took his hand, and Erik hauled him up.

“Yes,” said T’Challa, as a hopeful and wondering smile dawned slowly on his face. “We can and we must do better than our fathers. Let us make things right.”

Then he let go of Erik’s hand and gave him the crossed arm Wakandan salute for the first time. And for the first time, Erik returned it.

The chorus of Wakanda Forever started out faint and confused, but when the drummers took up a joyful and triumphant beat, it gained force and volume until Warrior Falls rang with it.

* * *

It was late when someone knocked on Erik’s door.

“Who is it?” Erik called out.

“It’s T’Challa. Can we speak?”

Erik opened it cautiously, in case it wasn’t actually T’Challa; Dora guards or not, he wasn’t about to get his ass killed now, when he’d fucking finally re-entered the blessedly normal, linear flow of time.

“Hey, what’s up? You got your Black Panther mojo back, right? Everything go okay?”

Erik let T’Challa into his suite, and T’Challa immediately started pacing the room in a steady and graceful predator’s lope.

“Yes, it was fine, I’m fine. And yes, I did. It’s only—when I entered the ancestral plane, I—remembered something.”

“Yeah?”

T’Challa stopped and looked Erik in the eye, though his words came out fast and disjointed. “We were there together, once. Weren’t we? There, in the ancestral plane, I remembered—and my father was with your father.”

Erik’s heart began to pound hard and fast, with hope or fear, he couldn’t tell which.

“What—what do you remember about us being in the ancestral plane?”

“There was an apartment, and you, and then we walked—”

“We followed the Great Panther, and she took us to our dads,” finished Erik.

“Yes. Yes, that’s—how?” asked T’Challa, eyes wide with wonder and confusion. “You remember it too?”

Hope won out over fear, a terrible hope that savaged Erik like an animal attack.

“Yeah. Do you remember anything else? Like—like deja vu, like a dream, things that you think happened, but didn’t—”

T’Challa shook his head. “No, only that time in the ancestral plane. Was it—was it a vision of the future? I didn’t think—”

“No. No, not of the future. Listen, this—this is gonna sound crazy, but since you remember that—you know the movie Groundhog Day?”

T’Challa frowned. “The one with the man who relived the same day over and over? Yes, my father enjoyed that movie.”

“Right, well, I was living that Bill Murray in Groundhog Day life for—a while. Kept living the same four days again, over and over and over. And in one of the loops, you and me, we went to the ancestral plane together, just like you remembered. I guess—I guess maybe now that I’ve broken the loop, you still remember that because we were outside time, together. Or Bast did me a favor, I don’t know.”

T’Challa laughed, a giddy and almost hysterical kind of sound. “How many times? How many times have you—?”

“I lost count.”

“What happened the first time? What was so terrible that the universe or the gods stepped and demanded you change it?”

“I don’t know about terrible, really,” said Erik with a shrug, thinking back to that first loop, so long ago now. “It was terrible for me, sure. But I figure the world went on just fine even in that timeline.”

“What happened?” insisted T’Challa.

“You killed me,” Erik admitted. “I challenged you, and I thought I won, but you survived, and I did a lot of bad shit, hurt a lot of people, so you finished the challenge and you killed me.”

“I’m so—” started T’Challa, as if Erik deserved an apology for something some other version of T’Challa had done, something Erik had deserved.

“Don’t apologize,” Erik interrupted. “It wasn’t even you—or, it was another timeline’s version of you, and it’s not like you didn’t have a good reason. A lot of good reasons, even. I didn’t exactly give you a choice.”

“I suppose I must take your word for it,” said T’Challa, frowning, his gaze distant. Then he focused back on Erik, and tilted his head. “I’m glad things went differently this time. The challenge, you yielding. That wasn’t about me, was it. It wasn’t even entirely about Wakanda.”

“No. No, that was—that was me letting go of what I thought I wanted.”

After so many deaths—nearly all of them violent and brutal and painful—this last death, of a desire that had been half a dream and half a nightmare, was a soft goodbye. When he’d taken T’Challa’s hand, he’d let the dream go, said goodbye to all its blood and fire. There’d be more fights to come, and Erik would welcome them, but they wouldn’t have to engulf the whole world. There would still be kitchens serving free and bountiful food, there would still be students learning eagerly in classrooms; there would still be Wakanda, proud and protected, and Oakland, always striving.

T’Challa nodded. “Thank you,” he said, almost formal. Then, “What do you know you want now?”

“I want to be the voice for all the people Wakanda’s abandoned over the centuries. I wanna help Wakanda come clean to the world, and I wanna help make sure Wakanda’s resources go where they’re most needed. I wanna fight for Wakanda, for Black and brown people around the world, when it’s necessary. That’s what I want.”

“You will have it,” promised T’Challa, and came close to grip the back of Erik’s neck and press their foreheads together. Erik returned the gesture tentatively, his hands unused to taking this sort of care. “All that and more.”

“Not sure I’m gonna be any good at all of it,” Erik admitted. “I haven’t been good for anything but fighting and killing for a long time.”

“You have time to figure it out,” said T’Challa, and Erik laughed, tears escaping his eyes.

 _Time._ No more four-day infinity for Erik, no more mobius strip loop of existence. Now he only had what everyone else had: a road stretching out into the distance, its path uncertain and its end unknown, a vast horizon of thrilling and terrifying possibility.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I finally do.”

* * *

When Erik woke on the fifth day—at least, Erik hoped it was the fifth day, it had to be the fifth day—he didn’t open his eyes, not at first. If he didn’t open his eyes, he wouldn’t have to know for sure, he wouldn’t have to face the awful possibility that despite what Bast had told him, he’d be back in Busan again, trapped in his own recursive eternity.

 _Please_ , he thought, in plea or in prayer, to Bast or the universe or anything that was listening. _Please._

And then he heard a rumble—no, purring. Like the self-satisfied sound of some big, pleased cat, and orange-gold began to light the dark behind his closed eyelids, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the sun rising over the Golden City, a wholly new, wholly perfect dawn spreading out bright and shining across the place Erik now knew he could call home.

* * *

_Oakland, Six Months Later._

“Is it much changed, from when you were younger?” asked T’Challa, looking at the rundown housing project of Erik’s youth.

Even wearing civilian, Western-style clothes to stay incognito, T’Challa stood out here amid the shabby grey of this stretch of gently deteriorating urban blight, some air of kingly gravitas and unimaginable wealth clinging to him and his sharply tailored black wool coat. Erik was back in his shearling jacket and glasses; prince or not, he could still disappear into any part of Oakland without much effort. The reversal of their usual dynamic made for a nice change. Finally, it was T’Challa who’d be the fish out of water.

Erik shrugged. “Not really.”

He turned away from the view of the projects to appraise the empty, weed-choked lot they stood in. On the other end of the lot, some kids had improvised half a basketball court, and just the sound of it made Erik feel like he was home: the slap and shuffle of sneakers on concrete, the smack of the rubber ball against the ground, the good-natured trash talk and laughter. It was kind of a shame the new Wakandan outreach center would deprive these kids of their court. But hopefully the outreach center would give them a hell of a lot more to do than play some games of pickup basketball.

His mom had told him _you gotta build too. You gotta teach. You gotta fill people’s bellies, and nurture their spirits_. This outreach center would do all that and more, would give kids like Erik the chance to move up in the world without having to sell their bodies or souls to dealers or gangs or the US military, without requiring them to leave their community.

T’Challa watched him watching the kids, and smiled. “You miss it,” he said, nodding his head towards the kids.

“What, basketball?” asked Erik absently. “Yeah, I do, everyone’s all soccer all the time in Wakanda—”

“No, I mean—all of this,” said T’Challa, gesturing towards the makeshift basketball court and the buildings around them. “This is your home too, isn’t it?”

Erik tipped his face into the biting wind blowing in off the Bay and shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess. But I don’t really miss Oakland. I miss the good times I had with my parents, and I miss being like those kids, maybe. No one’s all that innocent, growing up here, but they’re as close as it gets, you know? Maybe they’ll get to hold onto it longer now.”

A wild pass brought the basketball bouncing towards him and T’Challa, and Erik bent down to pick it up. He jogged a little closer towards the kids, spinning the slightly deflated ball between his palms.

“Thanks, mister,” said one of the kids, his voice polite but his eyes wary. Smart kid.

Erik passed the ball back towards him. “No problem.”

The kid paused, his eyes flickering between Erik and T’Challa and the sleek black SUV parked on the street behind them.

“That your ride?” the kid asked, nodding at the SUV.

“Yes, it is,” said T’Challa.

“Maybe don’t leave it parked there,” suggested the kid. “Kinda stands out too much, if you know what I mean. Might attract the wrong kinda attention.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Erik said. He toggled one of his kimoyo beads and lifted the illusion from the car to reveal a gleaming vibranium talon jet. The kid’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open, and he dropped the basketball. “But we’re thinking this is gonna attract the right kinda attention.”

The kid was a fast learner, or maybe he’d been dreaming of Wakanda just like Erik had when he was that age, because he said, “You’re from Wakanda.” He tore his eyes from the talon jet and the crowd of kids converging around it, and looked at them, challenge and disbelief in his wide brown eyes, the look of a kid who wasn’t used to wonderful things being meant for him. “What the hell are you doing _here_?”

“Yeah, we’re from Wakanda,” Erik told him. “But I’m from Oakland too. And I’m here to fight for a better life for you kids than the one I had when I was coming up in these projects.”

The kid’s eyebrows went up in surprise, then back down in admirable doubt and suspicion.

“They gonna let you do that?”

T’Challa laughed, easy and joyful, and Erik grinned. “Let ‘em try and stop me.”

**Author's Note:**

> A couple military jargon explanations: SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. JSOC stands for Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the US military's special operations unit.


End file.
